In Calea Vacaresti, on the outskirts of Bucharest, four families have made their homes in the dried out basin of an artificial lake. Eking out a living collecting scrap metal to sell to local car wreckers, they build shacks from bricks, plastic and cartons. Each spring the police come to tear down the huts, but they have nowhere else to go. Unregistered at birth, they are not even citizens in their own country, and therefore exist outside the limited social welfare structure of the modern Romania. The advent of winter brings temperatures of around 20 degrees celsius below. With sheets of plastic serving as windows, the temperature inside the shacks is no different to that outside. Anything and everything is burnt in a bid for warmth. The five children who live on the site do not leave their sheds all winter, breathing in fumes from scraps of rubber and plastic bubbling in the flames.
Cocalari ‘Iron People’
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