Cairo’s Zabbaleen: Photographs by Hermann Huber at Genesis Theatre
LONDON.- The photographs in this exhibition document the daily way of life for the Zabbaleen, a marginalized group of about 26,000 Coptic Christians, living in Egypt. They are a community of recyclers who have been collecting, sorting, exchanging, retrieving, trading and recycling since the 1950s while fighting for recognition and constantling living under threat from attemps to privatise waste management.
Over a period of several decades, the Zabbaleen have developed one of the most efficient and long-lasting raw material retrieval and waste recycling systems in the world, which until now has barely been noticed by the world’s media.
Over a period of several decades, the Zabbaleen have developed one of the most efficient and long-lasting raw material retrieval and waste recycling systems in the world, which until now has barely been noticed by the world’s media
Hermann Huber stayed with the Zabbaleen community where he made a series of Photographs documenting the existential problems of a manner of life and impress the viewer with the beauty of such an unusual and underrepresented place. Heaps of waste materials become abstract ornaments and the protagonists who pose boldly in front of them provide evidence of a life lived in immediacy, existing especially in the moment.
Hermann Huber was born in Vienna in 1966. At present he is living and working in Vienna and Cairo.
