Sometimes, I forget just how lucky I am. How lucky I am to have a home, a family, a job, a safe life. But occasionally, something comes along that shifts my perception. And this picture is one of those things. In this picture taken in the Dominican Republic, it appears that people are digging through an open pit landfill to find things of value. After some further research, I have come to find out they are searching for cobalt in things like scrap technology.

This picture speaks more than 1000 words. The main argument of this picture is to show the despair of these people. They are willing to dig through people’s trash and disgusting waste in search of a mineral that can be extremely toxic for humans. They will most likely only get paid a fraction of what the cobalt is worth. It’s hard to look at, hard to imagine that in 2023 I sit in my warm bedroom with silk sheets and a 120,000-dollar education, and these people dig through trash to survive. Is there anything that can be done? Is there anything I can do? Will this go on forever? These are all questions I find myself pondering as I look at this picture.

The next detail of this photo I was to discuss is the angle of where the photo was taken. It is taken from a point much higher than the workers. This symbolizes the dominance of the viewer. It’s almost as if the viewer is 100 feet taller than the workers, making them appear small and feeble. Another important detail is that it is an open pit mine. Open-pit mines are extremely poor for the environment. This symbolizes the poor socioeconomic conditions of the Dominican Republic.

The last visual detail I want to analyze in this photo is the use of pathos. If you look closely at the faces of the people, you can see they have a 1000-yard stare. Almost as if they are going through the motions. As if pain and that horrible smell don’t affect them anymore. This makes me feel extremely sympathetic and sorrowful that any person must go through this.

In conclusion, pictures can hold extreme amounts of power and rhetoric. This picture told a story that could be sprawled out over 10,000 pages. It is a story of wealth inequality, sadness, and hardship, of people doing anything that can do to survive.