Notes: Mar de Plastico y Esperanzas (Sea of Plastic and Hope)

Sorry I have been relatively silent but I have been back in Almeria, Spain, for almost 4 weeks now continuing on the project about African immigrants working in the greenhouse industry. I wrote about this earlier in April here. I have one more week left before heading back to London and trying to sort through everything to prepare for an exhibition in December.  Read on for a brief about the project…

Background

Almeria is a curious place for two key reasons: the ‘sea of plastic’ greenhouses that covers the landscape, and a complex economic system that feeds off the dreams of immigrants that hope it will be a stepping stone to their futures.

A desert wasteland, Almeria province historically was one of the poorest and unproductive parts of Spain. But over the past 40 years it has developed a resource intensive greenhouse industry that provides Europe with almost one-third of its winter vegetables. From the mountains to the sea, the landscape is covered in a “sea of plastic” from the intense number of greenhouses; look at Google Maps for an idea of what this looks like.

Since the 1990s, the industry has been primarily supported through immigrant labour; primarily from Romania, Morocco and the west Africa region. It started with contracted migrant labourers, but over the years, as more and more “pateras” (boats that cross illegally from Morocco to Spain) began arriving with illegal immigrants from Africa, there has been a huge labour force available within Almeria. Spanish people have virtually given up working as labourers in the greenhouses in favour of better jobs. It is a difficult job requiring you to spend 9 hours on your feet, bending over constantly and often working in 30+ temperatures. The minimum wage is 44 EUR per day, although right now most get paid between 30 and 35 EUR (some as low as 20 EUR!), and the work is seasonal and unpredictable.

Aside from the landscape, it is also a space where dreams and reality collide. For African immigrants in Spain. Almeria is at once an opportunity, a refuge and a trap. It is an opportunity because Spain’s laws allow for an illegal immigrant to obtain residency papers after 3 years if they can manage to obtain a work contract, and, until the past 2 years, it has been easy to find work, with or without papers. It is a refuge as it is the only place in the country where the police don’t make it a habit to ask for papers and hand out deportations, the cost of living is low and it is easy to find a ‘brother’ who can help you. And it is a trap because until you get your papers, it is difficult to move anywhere else in Spain or go home.

And now this crisis. Spain hasn’t shown signs of recovering yet, and unemployment is almost at XX%. Immigrants who managed to get their papers and move on to better work in other parts of Spain have returned to the greenhouses after losing their jobs. With the surplus of experienced legal labour available, those without papers are finding it more difficult to find work. And its even harder for those that have spent the last 3 years waiting to be eligible for residency only to find themselves without possibilities of getting a work contract now.

Where Spain was once a land of opportunity, right now many feel that they are no better off here (in some cases, worse) than they were in Africa. There is no typical description of their lives; they are with and without papers,  living from shacks to apartments, recently arrived to recently returned. Yet the key story they have in common is a desire to do something other than work in the greenhouses. Whether they have been here for 3 months or 13 years, they feel their situation is temporary, a step to bigger dreams.

Project

In April I came here for a few days with the intent of exploring the situation and getting a feel for the issues. This time I am here for almost 5 weeks with a clearer idea of the story I want to tell and more time to really talk to people and understand this strange place of transit.

There have been some really good recent photographic work done in the area that describes well the intensive greenhouse industry and the poor working conditions of migrant labourers. But what I really feel seems to be missing from all these visuals is a sense of people actually living here – not just as labourers but people with purpose and existence outside of the greenhouses.

So this project is a fluid attempt to describe the dynamics of ‘living’ in this temporary space. Mostly working in Roquetas de Mar, Las Norias and San Isidro, I am attempting to photograph life as it unfolds in the spaces I am invited to. At times there is a performance acted for the camera and for the foreigner that I am, but this becomes equally as important in showing the idiosyncracies in how they would like their lives to look.

A second part of the story involves personal narratives from those that are willing to share their story from me. Rather than use my own words to describe the complicated legal and emotional status people find themselves in, I hope that their stories will help to give a sense of why they came, why they stay, and where they want to go.

Product

I feel the best format for this project is a book. I have a mix of types of images – life, portraits and written stories. I am also working on a series of multiples – for example, of people on bikes – that I hope will serve to demonstrate some of the repetitiveness and monotony in life and landscape here much better than one picture could. I really do not want captions for the pictures as I want the stories to carry the context  but it may be an option to put captions as reference on the last page.

At the end, I will include a written piece for those that are interested in understanding the issue of immigration and greenhouses in Spain.

For the exhibition, I will have to think about the best way to present it – either a careful selection of 8×10 images, or a series of multiples might work combined with blown-up quotes of people’s stories. The story really needs more than just a few photographs to be effective.

Future plans

It definitely is not a complete project yet, there is still much to learn and I would really like to be able to follow some of the people’s stories down the road and also see how things change once the economy in Spain starts to pick up again.

Once I have had time to debrief I will write some self-reflection. As usual, the experience was overwhelming and I learned a lot about myself, my approach and the photographic experience.