Trafficking the Earth: Documents on Nitrate, Copper and Capitalism
Abstract
Trafficking the Earth documents the extraction of copper and nitrate from the Atacama Desert, Chile, and the accumulation of their values in metropolitan sites, the City of London and the houses of the British merchants in particular. Presented here as a photo-essay, it juxtaposes words and images to create constellations of meaning intended to disrupt a linear narrative of a past running smoothly into the present. The essay draws upon and tries to demonstrate a documentary practice that captures the collisions of time and the connected spaces of copper and nitrate mining as exemplary of an extractivist economy. The subject of the photography is the surplus of mining, its ruins, rubble and waste, which is offered not as a straightforward set of pictures but rather as perspectives through which the effects of global capitalism can be understood.
Keywords
extractivism, photography, copper, nitrate, mining, Chile, Atacama
Author Biography
Ignacio Acosta
Ignacio Acosta is a Chilean artist and researcher based in London working in photography to explore geopolitical power dynamics of minerals. His book Copper Geographies (Editorial RM) was published in 2018 (http://ignacioacosta.com).
Louise Purbrick
Louise Purbrick is a researcher and lecturer based at the University of Brighton, UK; her work is devoted to understanding the sites of extraction and incarceration; she investigates the material culture of conflict and everyday life (https://research.brighton.ac.uk/ en/persons/louise-purbrick).
Xavier Ribas
Xavier Ribas is a photographer and lecturer at the University of Brighton as well as Universitat Politècnica de València. His photographic work, widely published and exhibited, examines contested sites and the geographies of abandonment (http://www.xavierribas.com).