Private Story
Mineral Veins | Transitory Landscapes
For more than 4 years I have been working on a project about mining - focused in Brazil, my home country. There, the intensive mining activity has resulted in a radically changed - and decaying - landscape. It has also shaped the identity and the challenges faced by local society.
In November 2015, just 70 miles away from my hometown, the collapse of a mining tailings dam caused the largest socio-environmental disaster in Brazil’s history. Small towns were overwhelmed by more than 10.5 billion gallons of sludge in one of the country’s most important watersheds.
In January 2019, another catastrophic mining dam collapsed in Minas Gerais, costing the lives of hundreds. The two tragedies exposed the immanent risk thousands of Brazilians live with, often unknowingly. The full extent of the human and environmental devastation caused by these accidents, and by open pit mines more generally, are only now becoming widely recognized, having been obscured by the region’s inaccessible mountainous terrain as well as the opaque regulatory environment.
Even though the activity is responsible for 15% of the country’s gross product, and it sources around 25% of the world’s iron, it does so at the cost of environmental devastation and social disparities. A few of the numerous side effect of this activity are: water scarcity, respiratory diseases, semi slavery employment, high levels of prostitution, air pollution, temperature increase, deforestation, etc.
Working in collaboration with a pilot, I started photographing Minas Gerais from above, sometimes flying in forbidden air space and drove by myself through the regions I had flown above. I spent time with communities affected by mining and I stablished a close relationship this some of them.
In the land as a body, mining exploration is a violent act of penetration. The new matter is conquered by a constant extirpation where the subject is defenseless..
Júlia Pontés (b.1983 - Minas Gerais, Brazil) - Based in São Paulo and New York. Júlia is an artist based between São Paulo and New York. Her work explored the boundaries of photography, documentary and social activism. Born in Minas Gerais, Brazil, Pontés graduated at the International Center of Photography in 2015, during which she mentored with Fred Ritchin. Since, she has been chosen twice for the Emerging Immigrant Artist Program by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and granted a Lillian Disney Scholarship from CalArts and the Allan Sekula Social Documentary grant. She is currently a Columbia Visual Arts MFA candidate. Her long term project on the humanitarian and environmental devastation caused by mining in Brazil was recognized by Harvard University’s Planetary Alliance and Visura. Her images were published in Bloomberg Businessweek, Geo Magazine, Plurale, Folha de São Paulo, Jornal Estado de Minas, Jornal O Tempo, Globo G1, Musee Magazine, Co Curate Magazine among others. Her work has been shown in solo shows in the US in New York and in Brazil in Tiradentes, Paranapiacaba and Congonhas and in several group shows in New York, Recife, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Guatemala and Buenos Aires.
87
