Joseph Gazing Wolf was born in a place known as Garbage City.

Manshiyat Nasser, Egypt is an industrial area just east of Cairo. The people who live there serve as the informal trash collectors of metropolitan Cairo. 

“We would go pick up the trash and bring it back home,” Wolf explained. “We would build our homes out of trash. Anything that we were able to recycle, we would recycle. Anything we were able to eat, we would use for food.”