Water Tanks Mathare, Nairobi

In 2011 Filippo Romano began photographing Nairobi’s Mathare slums, home to roughly half a million people. His fascination with the adaptation shown by its communities ranges from the nightlife and colourfully decorated motorbikes to water tanks as DIY infrastructure and trash pickers in Dandora, Nairobi’s main dumping site. Beginning where his first series on water tanks left off, this second instalment covers five additional years of photographs of these large plastic reservoirs, which are frequently mounted atop concrete structures or metal frameworks for distribution. Romano’s project was part of the exhibition ‘Made in Slums – Mathare Nairobi’ at the Triennale Museum in Milan in 2013.

3rd Prize Kassel Dummy Award 2018