Mathare is a collection of slums in Nairobi, with a population of approximately of 500,000 people living in 3,2 squared kilometers. The water tank series is a part of a project about Mathare and the city of Nairobi that started in 2011. Officially the government doesn’t recognize the legal existence of the ghettos even if 3\4 of the population of Nairobi live in informal settlements often without running water. An international NGO has built and placed in some hot spots of the slum a series of water tanks connected with the public water system but the distribution of the water is privatized with the result that a water gallon in Mathare slum cost 20 sh (0,20 euro), nearly two times more than in a rich neighborhood of Nairobi. The water tanks are divided into two different typologies: officials, those who are placed on the concrete cube, and the illegals.
I made a sort of endless catalogue of them not simply to show the problem of the water but also to document them as urban elements impacting the fragile geography of an extreme informal settlement. I was and an I’m still interested in how communities react to strong urban intervention or simply they made their own “self colonisation” of imposed building and structure.