The Dump

by Peppe Arninge

The Dump is a photo book about some of the most silent and abused people in the world. They are the unfortunate, who have been forced to spend their lives on and around the notorious Cambodian garbage dumps. It is a journey along aroad of poverty, humiliation and oceans of tears with no end and no apparent hope for the future. This book is also a tribute to the most persistent people on earth, who refuse to give up the only thing they have - their pride as human beings. After decades of an extremely brutal domestic war, Cambodia today is a fragile, tropical paradise with incomprehensible corruption and a total lack of human rights. For a large group, "being Cambodian" doesn't mean that you're part of something bigger. It means that you're part of a mental and physical holocaust that never ceases. Still, the mothers, fathers and children of these garbage dumps far better represent the pride of humanity than most of us.

80 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 25, 2011

Reviews

[Emmy]

I won't give this a star rating - mainly because it feels less like a book and more like an exposé piece of journalism or a presentation. I read this as an e-book, but I believe this book has potential to have an excellent printed edition, if the layout was improved so that the pictures emerged better with the photographs. Digitally it looked like a powerpoint I would've made in high school, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, considering that it's the message that counts, but it was a bit distracting to go from pictures to wall-of-text, to more pictures.

I hadn't heard of this book before I stumbled upon it, but from what the last page says, it seems like his articles more so than this book may have a greater impact on actual change being made in Cambodia especially.