The World Cup's Abu Ghraib moment? It's not even a World Cup image | Jonathan Jones

Yes, the woman in the bin is an ugly truth but football is still a beautiful game. To say this picture defines Brazil's World Cup is meaningless

The photographer has caught an empty plastic bottle in mid flight. It has been casually aimed by a man in a Brazil football shirt who may or may not be aware that a woman is rooting in the rubbish at the bottom of the bin into which his bottle is bound.

It falls like a missile heading straight for her, the nose cone about to strike her body. The message, intentional or not, is clear enough: this woman is human rubbish. Not only is she scavenging for scraps tossed away by football fans who are leaving the stadium after a match in Brazil, but rubbish is also being dropped on to her, reducing her to detritus.

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