Vik Muniz

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Vik Muniz: Perspective of Jardim Gramacho Charles Darwin stated, “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” Perhaps no man has truly lived these few words quite like Vik Muniz. In the documentary film, Waste Land, Muniz shows how he documented his time in giving back to people who needed it most. He explains his views on the people affected and how it changes from beginning to end. While researching a way to provide help to other people, Muniz found a landfill in Brazil named Jardim Gramacho. This landfill is the largest in the world, with more than 7,000 tons of garbage arriving daily. They hire workers that come and sift through all of the garbage as it is brought in. These people are known as “pickers”. They are viewed as having no hope or plan in the future, but Muniz knows that there is something so much more in them. Muniz changes the focus from…show more content…
He begins to understand what it is like to have to dig through garbage all day. Muniz, being the amazing artist that he is, wants to portray what each picker has to go through in order to get to where they are at today. He decides to create images with the garbage that they sort through in order to portray the emotion of each picker. At this point, he realizes that pickers have a heart, they have goals they want to reach, and they have a family just like he does. Muniz is starting to connect closer with each picker and realizes that they deserve more, so he decides to give back to them in a way they will never forget. At the beginning of this process all he wants to do is simply paint the pickers with their garbage, but with their inspiration it turns into so much more. They all work together on each individual portrait as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage. This not only portrays the dignity, but also the despair of their lives as they re-imagine
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    filmmakers and Vik Muniz traveled to Brazil’s most poverty stricken place to capture the lives of people who live there and change it. Jardim Gramacho is located outside of Rio de Janeiro; it is a place where all the trash gets dumped at. Many people from different backgrounds work there by collecting recyclable materials and selling it to companies. Many of these people are poverty stricken and they survive day to day by working there and also feeding their family with what they have left. Vik Muniz is a

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