ART WORKS Projects joins The Hague Climate Week 2026 (Haagse Klimaatweek), spotlighting the work of recent Emerging Lens Fellows Oyewole Lawal and Edwin Ndeke.

Through a special presentation and slideshow of their documentary photography, Lawal and Ndeke take audiences inside the lives of waste workers in Nigeria and Kenya—people on the front lines of the global waste crisis. Their labor is essential to recycling and environmental protection, yet too often remains unseen.

Lawal’s Guardians of Gaia: The Unseen Eco-Warriors documents the waste miners of Lagos’s sprawling Olusosun Landfill, challenging the stigma surrounding their work and recognizing their role in reducing the environmental impact of what society throws away. Ndeke’s documentary work examines life around Kenya’s largest dumpsite, revealing how waste threatens ecosystems and human lives while bringing visibility to the workers sorting and recovering the materials we discard.

Together, their images ask us to look again at what—and whom—we throw away.