The third leg of the 'Critical Minerals' project took me to the Democratic Republic of Congo to document the condition and impact of the mining of Copper and Cobalt, essential for the green energy transition.
The environmental and human conditions of mining have been widely reported, and the mainstream narrative faithfully describes the devastating working conditions, the quasi-slave-like exploitation and the problematic health, environmental and economic conditions that men, women, and often children are subjected to, directly or indirectly involved in mining. […]
Read MoreI have never seen such iridescent light as radiated in the sky above San Pedro de Atacama at sunset.
It is an immense lapse of time ruled by the sun and the dryness of the air at an altitude of three thousand metres. Between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., the rocks and the surrounding desert are irradiated with shades of yellow, indigo, violet, green, and blue that my camera refuses to register.
Read MoreOn 27 September 2022, a bubbling gas patch appeared in the Baltic Sea. The enormous methane leak, resembling a huge Jacuzzi in the open sea, was the result of sabotage on Nord Stream pipeline, one of the crucial infrastructures for Europe’s energy supply transporting gas from Russia to Europe. The aerial shot taken by Swedish coastguard authorities looks like a huge white blob spreading across the deep blue Baltic Sea. The image transmitted across all media channels is dramatically reminiscent of the Eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings. [more]
Read More"If there is something that opens the horizons, it is precisely ignorance."
I read this sentence by writer and diplomat Romain Gary during a train journey from New York to Washington. It takes me a few minutes to interpret the sentence taken out of its context.
I wonder if the term “ignorance” in the phrase should be interpreted as "non-knowledge" and, as such, if the status of “not knowing” could potentially stimulate curiosity and thus open the horizons, metaphorically speaking, of the mind.
Read MoreIt is just under three months since the start of 2022 and my last newsletter. In it, I imagined new resolutions for the coming year and wished myself - and wished you - a happy new year and a timid exit from two years of Covid pandemic that has marked us deeply.
Hopes for a social, human, economic recovery seem to have been swept away on the night of 24 February 2022. Indeed they have been swept away for the Ukrainian people brutally attacked by the anachronistic madness of an autocrat turned warmongering dictator.
Read MoreAs 2021 draws to a close, I want to make a brief reflection and make, as usual, some New Year's resolutions.
In the first few months of 2021, we were still in the midst of the pandemic - let's hope that despite the current news in 2022 we will kindly get over the hump - and travel occasions were still minimal. However, I took the opportunity to reorganise my life and professional commitments also because of my relocation to Switzerland that took place precisely at that time.
Read More"Sinomocene" is a project that takes its cue from the documentation of the Chinese initiative known as "Belt and Road" or "New Silk Road" to investigate more widely on issues of new forms of colonialism, globalization, and the relation between Powers and individuals. The work focuses on the social and environmental impact of large capital movements linked to geopolitical strategies at a global and local level. Like many other powers in history, as soon as China amassed enough economic wealth at home, it began projecting its influence overseas.
Read MoreThe organisation of movement across border structures shows unequal treatment of different groups of people. Privileged passengers can move easily and swiftly across the globe and may, even in developing countries, remain in secure and familiar environments. The journeys of migrants, who are travelling under dissimilar pretences, are usually 3 exhausting and dangerous. They frequently strand in different places at various stages of their journey – their movement is slowed down or “petrified” (2011, p.201).
Read MoreHistory has been created through stories and the memories of individuals having witnessed certain events. Today, however, the media no longer exist as narratives but rather as flashes and images. History is therefore being reduced to images.
Paul Virilio to David Levi Strauss. (2003, p.167)
This essay investigates the ability of photographs to bear witness to historical trauma and how differing approaches to visualisation, forms of distribution and presentation may affect how an audience is called to perceive a historical trauma. This is examined through the analysis of selected images captured by photographers Jerome Sessini and Donald Weber during the protests in Kiev in February 2014 and immediately after the MH17 Flight was shot down while flying over Eastern Ukraine on the 17th of July in 2014. I assert that despite the aesthetic differences and dissimilar visual strategies, both the images of Sessini and Weber are the result of an active process of documentation that has the potential to bear witness to the events and historical trauma in Ukraine.
Read MoreThe increasing number of digital images produced and distributed today has been an argument of investigation for numerous scholars as well as the subject of vast literature on the usage and impact of such images on our society. While the pressing issue to the majority of scholars concerns the ability of the digital image to represent reality, an increasing amount of literature questions the role of digital images in the broader, networked context of artificial intelligence and machine learning. This paper traces the evolution of traditional photography to data images to describe the shift in the essential nature of images from the way they were consumed by the public to becoming a source of raw material to feed sophisticated autonomous learning machines that are able to recognise, categorise and classify objects, humans and spaces.
The paper analyses the use of image as evidence tracing a chronology of photography in relation to technological progress. The ability of computer vision combined with the continuous stream of images and machine learning capabilities offer a wide range of beneficial possibilities, but this technology can also be misused and raises numerous ethical questions. This paper, rather than attempting to ascertain an answer to this question, seeks to display its complexity to underscore and reiterate the risks of relying entirely on machines. Unconditional trust in technology not only does not protect us from the probability of human error, but it also reduces our critical capabilities.
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