Savant Noir’s Tire Man (left) and
Patrick Kitete’s Flip-Flop Man
protest centuries of drain on the
natural resources of the Dem-
ocratic Republic of the Congo,
including rubber taken to make
tires and inexpensive shoes.
Stéphan Gladieu photographed
them for projects that he names
in scientific classification form,
as if the costumed figures were
new species: Homo trash trash
and Homo detritus.
6 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC