The Damned Yard a trip to Sodoma and Gomorra

The "Damned Yard: “A Trip to Sodom and Gomorrah" project was made at Agbogloshie, in the suburbs of Accra, in June 2017. Accra’s downtown is the largest e-waste dump in Africa known from everyone with the biblical name of "Sodom and Gomorrah".

The realization of the reportage was possible thanks to a crowdfunding that allowed me to cover travel costs and part of the costs of producing and printing the photographs.

"The Damned Yard" has the aim to show the poor working and living conditions in the dump and in the shanty town of Old Fadama beside it. The chosen shots try to show the several stages of the work that is repeated every day at Agbogloshie: the metal recovery from electronic gadgets that are no longer working and, in some cases, reallocation and sale on the second-hand local market.

The reportage also tells about the precarious living conditions of those who live in the slums nearby the dump, without services and in a totally unhealthy environment. Some of the pictures show the damage to the environment - mainly on water and on the ground - caused by the lack of compliance with any environmental norm in the electronic waste treatment process.

In some cases photo-making was not easy, many of the people working in the landfill have no interest in spreading in Europe a negative image of the landfill and about the work that they do, despite the dire consequences on health. Anyway - apart from some isolated cases , I have to say thank you to Yagmah that I met in the place and who helped and guided me without asking me any rewards -Thanks to him I could talk to so many people happy to share their experience. It is to them that I dedicate this project and it is for them that the spread of these photos is necessary, indeed.