A video of my visit to Vik Muniz’s exhibition “Portraits of Garbage”

Taking photos is graciously allowed inside Malagá’s Centro de Arte Contemperanéo (known as the CAC) . It is probably the norm at most galleries these days. I’ve taken advantage in Glasgow, Liverpool, London and in Malaga.

And so inside the CAC I photographed my favourite parts of the “Portraits of Garbage” installations which Muniz created at Jardim Granacho, a Rio garbage landfill site.

People lived on Jardim Granacho, eking out a living picking through the garbage for ‘valuable’ items to sell, instructed by gang masters, until the site closed down in 2012 after 34 years of operation.

Muniz made a film about the project, which he named “Wasteland”, and it’s available as a DVD from Amazon.

When I got back home, I was so impressed by the work I’d seen in the photos, I wanted to write about it. Some lines of poetry came to me and I set it down in verse… non-rhyming of course! You can hear a reading of the poem, which I named “For Your Pleasure”, in the video below. Or you can read the poem yourself here.

The title “For Your Pleasure” was a nod to the art house band Roxy Music, whose album of the same name over the years, has given me much enjoyment .

The music on the video is “Granaina” by Pepe Habuelcha from the album, “The Beginner’s Guide to Flamenco”. More info on that music here