"Waste Land" by Vik Muniz

Easily as concerned with social and environmental issues as it is with the fine-art career that sets it in motion,"Waste land" introduces Vik Muniz, an artist known for photographs that construct portraits or recreate famous images using materials like sugar, chocolate syrup, and trash. The Brooklyn-based photographer grew up poor in Brazil, and we meet him as he embarks on a massive project taking him to Rio de Janeiro's Jardim Gramacho, a garbage dump that receives more trash each day than any landfill in the world. throughout this film, Vik Muniz exposes the idea of social practice in art. Social practice is an art medium that focuses on engagement through human interaction and social discourse.Socially engaged art aims to create social and/or political change through collaboration with individuals, communities, and institutions in the creation of participatory art.The discipline values the process of a work over any finished product or object. This especially holds truth for the workers called the catadores in the film, their collaboration with Muniz  helped us understand the motives and drive behind them.

Muniz’s initial objective was to “paint” the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives.Seven catadores turn into a masterpiece as Muniz geniuses his pieces and leads them to seek after a superior life. While working with the catadores, sentiments are found that would not have been seen from a far: the despair expressed on their faces as they tell the stories of their lives; the dignity the catadores hold themselves with as they tell about their job; and the heart-touching spirits that shine as they cry over Vik's craftsmanship as it is uncovered to them. Isis, one of the pickers unfortunately communicates, "Look Vik… this is anything but a future". This film depicts how individuals who have wound up in a real predicament, still do what they can to help spare the earth and take pride in their work. The catadores' lives turned into the principle focal point of the film and watching them change while Muniz finishes his fine art work of art is a special affair.

Muniz turns into a hero to the catadores; demonstrating to them how their circumstances can be extraordinary and drives them to the acknowledgment of another life. He has totally changed the life of one picker specifically: Tiao dos Santos, the president of Jardim Gramacho landfill as mentioned above. Tiao is photographed in an abandoned bathtub to mimic the late painting, “The Death of Marat” from 1793. Tiao’s photograph is then sold in London for over 50,000 US dollars. He plans to use that money to give back to the catadores and to the environment as much as he can . The transformation Tiao undergoes during the film is enlightening, because he is discouraged and ready to give up at the beginning, but by the end, after he sees what ambition could give, he is ready to take on a whole new life. Generally, the film's general message is the means by which waste is reused and how it is given another life again and again until the point when it at long last gets covered in a landfill. Muniz is reusing the lives of the catadores, selling their portraits of garbage and giving the cash back to the catadores so they can better their lives.