Smokey Mountain, Cambodia
Recipient of the Critical Mass 2011 Solo Exhibition Award
April 5 – 29, 2012
Smokey Mountain rubbish dump, at Steung Mean Chey, started as a landfill site sixty years ago, and
is now part of Phnom Penh, Cambodia; the grey cloud of acrid smoke exuding from constantly
burning garbage gives it its nickname. There are over 2,000 casual workers, including some 600
children, who scavenge across the dumpsite, collecting plastic bags, metal, plastics and paper;
which are then sorted, cleaned, weighed, and sold for recycling. People work, eat, and sleep amidst
the rubbish and constant fumes, their strenuous labor earns them about $1 per day. Waste pickers
even work night-shifts using miner’s lamps to illuminate their way, one of Smokey Mountain’s most
visually striking characteristics. It is a place notorious for pollution, crime, and disease; medical
waste is a constant hazard.
In Asia, whole communities have developed out of the waste industry, handling some 75% of urban
waste. What is a life of misery for some, is an example of sustainable development to others. Across
Asia, the figures for recycling man-made resources, by such communities, are staggeringly high
compared with the western developed countries. Informal waste collection systems have
environmental and economic advantages, reducing the need for landfill, saving natural resources,
while providing an important lifeline for some of the world’s poorest people, but waste scavengers
have dramatically shortened life expectancies, poor health and bad living conditions
Nigel Dickinson, is a British documentary photographer, photojournalist and filmmaker, working for over 40 years. His work focuses on the environment, human condition, marginalised communities, resistance, sustainable development, identity and culture. He graduated from Sheffield University in 1982 with a BA in Comms Arts, photography and film. In 1983 his photographs ‘Demonstrate’, on public protest. were exhibited at Camerawork Gallery, London. He worked in South Africa 1983, this work on Race and Class in South Africa, entitled ‘Soweto Country Club’ was exhibited and published across the UK national press
During the early eighties, “Hanging On By Your Fingernails” about Staffs striking coal miners, their families and the Great Miner’s Strike, was published by Spokesman Press and exhibited by the Arts Council of Great Britain. Based in Birmingham UK, Dickinson worked as a documentary photographer and as a freelance for UK national press. Dickinson shot campaigns with Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Amnesty International and Survival. Several trips across South East Asia, documenting indigenous peoples, deforestation and native blockades won him UNEP bronze award at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, and premiered at Fotofeis, Scotland.
In the nineties, Dickinson joined picture agencies Still Pictures/London and Polaris/New York. ROAD about Environmental Road Protest in UK was published and toured by the Arts Council in 1994, and published internationally. In the 1990s Dickinson began his longterm documentary work on Roma across the world. He worked across Bosnia and Kosovo during the Balkans wars, covering refugees of war, diaspora and ethnic cleansing. Ten years at Saintes Maries de la Mer in France Gypsy festival “Sara. Le pelerinage des gitans” was published by Actes Sud and premiered at Les Rencontres, Arles 2003. Dickinson worked across Central and South America, with street children, covering the aftermath of Guatemala’s civil war, the Yanomami, climate change in the Amazon, Brazil and the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras.
In 1997 he received a World Press for his work on BSE and Mad Cows. Since then he photographed the Meat industry across the world, and man’s relationship to the beasts he kills and eats. This work, MEAT has been shortlisted for the European Publishers Award, exhibited at the Hayward Gallery, London 2015 and shown at Zoom festival 2019. Dickinson won runner up in the Eugene Smith Award in 2000, for his work on Roma during the Balkan Wars. For many years he has photographed the rise of anti-gypsyism and aspects of Roma across the world, across the Balkans, Europe, United States, South America and Asia. The “Roma with borders” work will soon be published.,
Living under Sharia Islamic law, shot in northern Nigeria in 2003 was published worldwide. Smokey Mountain rubbish dump, recycling Phnom Penh, won Critical Mass in 2011, and was exhibited at Fotofeist Houston Biennale “Changing Circumstances” in 2016. Dickinson’s work has also been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Visa Pour l’image, Les Rencontres d’Arles, the OSI Documentary Series ‘Moving Walls’, Kolga TibilisiGeorgia, the Denmark Triennale, and published and assigned by international press and magazines in Stern, Southeast Asia Globe, National Geographic Magazine, D Republicca, Mare, La Vanguardia, Figaro, Focus, Geo, New York Times, Sunday Times, The Guardian and We Demain
Nigel Dickinson has directed several short documentary films for the IFRC, OECD, IEA, Red Cross and the film ‘The Solar Power Village’ Tamera in Portugal. From 2012-2016 Dickinson has revisited the Borneo rainforest to film and photograph the indigenous peoples of Sarawak, whom he first photographed in the 1980s.
Dickinson lives between UK and Paris, working in Europe, Americas and South East Asia. Recent works include China Big Brother, Brexit Britain, The threat to ancient woodlands, Eco warriors and Resistance to HS2 and Fishing communities in Cambodia.