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.

In July I took a master class workshop with Pep Bonet at the Fotopub festival in Novo Mesto, Slovenia. The best thing I did all summer so far… I really valued Pep’s direct and intuitive approach in guiding the 6 of us, and I really feel that an intense workshop like that – 5 days of shooting, getting feedback, learning and reshooting – is a great way to develop. Pep gave me some valuable advice on my portfolio but the one comment that really stuck is that I still shoot with so much variety that its hard to know which one is ‘me.’ I liked that advice and it made me think a lot about my approach and what I want it to communicate.

The workshop was led by the keyword “identity” and we each had to find a project to shoot for 5 days in this tiny town of Novo Mesto where nothing seemed to be happening. I decided to work on a story about youth; that time where young people are just beginning to realize their possibilities (or limits), and trying to figure out where they fit in all of it is really intriguing to me, even more so in a small town where there seem to be more limits than possibilities. I had such a great week with this project and met some new young friends that really surprised me with the awareness they had of who they were or wanted to be. I dont remember being so together at 18… I know Ill meet a few of them again and Im really looking forward to it.

Here are the images. Im quite happy with what I was able to do over the week. And I would really appreciate any feedback on this work. It helps me grow…

- Granada, Spain, 18 degrees on a cloudy evening, listening to the sounds from Calle Pintor Lopez Mezquita.

Abbie Trayler Smith's work screening at Fotopub 2009

Paul tipped me off about the Fotopub Festival in Novo Mesto, Slovenia, at the beginning of August and I had the opportunity to spend the week there attending a workshop with Pep Bonet.

The festival was small but I thought it was such a great experience. Directed by Chris de Bode (Amsterdam), there was definitely a strong international component to the festival through exhibitions and workshop mentors (Pep Bonet, Abbie Trayler-Smith, Ahmet Polat, Steve Forrest), but for the most part the participants were mostly the friendliest Slovenian amateur and professional photographers, with the exception of the few of us foreigners from Canada, Italy and the Netherlands.

But the smallness of it is was made it so special. It was like being with a big family of photographers, everyone hanging together in the bar every night (Pep noted there was “more pub than photo”; alcohol was ridiculously cheap in Novo Mesto), the mentors were really approachable and willing to look through portfolios and give advice. And every evening there were engaging talks.  The event finished with a screening of everyone’s workshop projects, and it was so exciting to see everyone’s hard work up there on the big screen.

The Urban Eye (Arnau Oriol Sanchez) screening at Fotopub

Some highlights:

* I hadn’t heard of Ahmet Polat, one of the mentors, but I loved his black & white work of Turkey and his approach to photography.

* World Press Photo exhibit featuring Majority World photographers – my favourites included Bevis Fusha’s work on the Albanian environment, Abdir Abdullah’s climate change work in Bangladesh, and Sudharak Olwe’s project on midwives in India.

* Thursday was a special outdoor screening of 16 selected audio slideshows. It was like watching a movie and a really nice way to show work. Included was a multimedia piece on London’s CCTV cameras by my friend, Arnau Oriol Sanchez, woohoo!

* Abbie Trayler-Smith, one of the mentors, won the Nikon Thursday Award for her moving portraits of asylum seekers in the UK. The major winning factor, according to the judges, was the intimacy and perseverance that was obvious in her work; she spent 8 months getting to know them and their stories.

Slovenian photographer and originator of Fotopub, Borut Peterlin, created some cool stop-motion videos of the festival…

- Sarajevo, Bosnia, 23 degrees, clear and bright evening sky, listening to the calls from the mosques in Sarajevo

I have been finding it really difficult to blog the past few months. I feel like I have been constantly on the move (actually I have), and every time I sit down to write I either don’t finish the thought or let it wait until I can make a better edit of images or it accidently gets deleted (aaargh!).

But I think I need to start writing again. And write more often. I need to start reflecting more on what I am doing, why and how. Then look back and read it again, especially when I’m doubting myself or losing track of my where I am at and where I want to go.

So this is the start of a series of updates and images… Brief summary of what’s been happening since the beginning of July: Ljubljana with N. catching up on love, friends, work, taxes and essays; blissful holiday at an “unofficial” nude camp in Murter, Croatia; attending a workshop with Pep Bonet at the Fotopub Festival in Novo Mesto, Slovenia; trumpet festival in Guca, Serbia; and now in Sarajevo, Bosnia, working on a project on the culture of turbofolk, which will have to be put on hold for  the moment as I have just decided to move on… the clouds are clearing.

- Sarajevo, Bosnia,  25 degrees, clear afternoon sky, listening to Pete Rock & CL Smooth’s “All the Places“

She wasn’t posing, she is just a wealth of expression that girl.

- ljubljana, slovenia, 16 degrees, listening to Ustata’s “Male Male“

There is this amazing set of images going around the photography blogosphere right now. They are of Picasso drawing light graffiti for LIFE photographer Gjon Mili. See them on the LIFE website:

LIFE photographer Gjon Mili visited Picasso in 1949. Mili showed the artist some of his photographs of ice skaters with tiny lights affixed to their skates jumping in the dark—and Picasso’s mind began to race. The series of photographs that follows—Picasso’s light drawings—were made with a small flashlight in a dark room; the images vanished almost as soon as they were created.

So this is what has been running through my mind all day and perhaps its a bit tedious but I have all these questions about it. Those are pieces of art, right? Sure, they are photographs of art, but the art actually only exists because the light needs the photographic image to give it any sense of shape and permanence. They are Pablo Picasso originals (and that is one Picasso I would love to have one on my wall).

So who owns this art, really? The photographer or the light artist? Ok, in this case it is the photographer. But, I don’t think a light graffiti artist today would agree (unless it was the photographer who directed the drawing). Or maybe they would? A collaboration seems like the right way to put it… Not sure why Ive been thinking about this but it seems like an interesting exploration of the subject/photographer link and ownership.

Here’s a beautiful contemporary light graffiti movie by LichtFaktor.

I met Filomena at the Freddie Mills Club in the Elephant & Castle area of London. A devout Irish Catholic, she was getting the hall set-up for the charity boxing fundraiser that night and made me a cup of tea while we were waiting for it to start. She told me a lot of stories in a short time, about wars, starting life in the uk, family, faith, tea… After an already long day of photographing rowdy pub boys, this was a pleasant little break.

She is really upset that the Southwark Council is going to tear down the little hall run by her church – it is the only community space they have.

Admittedly, the photo could have been composed a bit lower but I just love her expression so much I had to share it. I wish I could share the photo I mentally shot when I met her walking towards me holding a cross to her lips.

- london, uk, clear early evening sky, 19 degress, listening to Feist’s ‘I feel it all‘

Spitou Mendy taking a break from visiting migrant workers, part of his role as leader of the agricultural worker's union (SOC-SAT) in Almeria. (c) Marcia Chandra 2009

In April I was in Granada, Spain, trying to work on a documentary photography project with a female gypsy organization. After numerous frustrations and the realization that the project was going nowhere at that moment, I spontaneously went to Almeria near the end of my break. I had been reading many newspaper reports about immigration issues in the south of Spain and, in particular, its relation with greenhouse agriculture, and I was curious about it.

I happened to be put in touch with Spitou Mendy, a tireless union organizer who leads the SOC-SAT – an agriculture worker’s union in Almeria (in the municipalities of Almeria, El Ejido and San Isidro). Over the course of 3 days he was invaluable at helping me to understand the situation, introducing me to people, and allowing me to join him on his visits with migrant workers. I was also lucky to have met Tobias Zick, a journalist, and Marc Beckmann, a photographer, who were doing a story for Neon magazine in Germany (just published if you read German!) – I didn’t have a car and they needed translation, a perfect match. But more than that, it was a great experience to be able to work with a photographer and journalist in the field; I learned a lot from them and they were very supportive of the work I was doing. It was nice feedback to hear from them that my approach with people was very personal; even if my photography hasn’t come into its own yet, I am glad to know that I am approaching it the way I feel works best.

You can see some more images from almeria here and here. Today I got some feedback from my prof, John Easterby, on the edit of what I shot in April. Surprisingly, it was nothing surprising as he confirmed everything I felt about what I had done so far – it needs a lot more time, my style is still a little confused, and something seemed to be missing. I think good photo editors are really intuitive. We had a good discussion about what I felt was missing; everything I shot seemed to be quite serious and rather bleek but what I actually experienced was people living, making do, enjoying what they can from the lives they are able to carve in this transient place. In three days, despite the heaviness of the experience, I also had a lot of fun with everyone I met, sharing laughs and stories.

Anyways, it was too short a visit to photograph what I would have liked – an intimate portrait of people trying to move forward amidst such insecurity. The edit I came back with were just a beginning. But I was glad I went, I was touched by all the people that shared their stories with me, and motivated by the clear and complicated injustices that exist there. I want to go back and work longer there to see if I can find a way to share these stories – they are important.

- london, uk, 18 degrees, partly cloudy afternoon, im in the library so no listening to anything…

Over the past few weeks, Peter Fraser has been inspiring and guiding our group of aspiring documentary photographers in liberating our vision to be able to see the world around us. Our only directions: to “see men like trees, walking”, to work in colour, and to take as inspiration John Szarkowski’s “Introduction to William Eggleston’s Guide.” A quote from the essay:

Form is perhaps the point of art. The goal is not to make something factually impeccable, but seamlessly persuasive. In photography the pursuit of form has taken an unexpected course. In this peculiar art, form and subject are defined simultaneously. Even more than in the traditional arts, the two are inextricably tangled. Indeed, they are probably the same thing. Or, if they are different, one might say that a photograph’s subject is not its starting point but its destination.

In these images of ordinary objects, form becomes the subject.

- London, clear night, 13 degrees, listening to Radio Citizen’s “The Hop“

Went to a (semi) interesting lecture at the London School of Economics yesterday: “Opening up ‘Illiberal’ Regimes: do media and communications matter?“

There wasn’t really anything groundbreaking shared, but there were some interesting notes about the role of global citizen media inside and outside of ‘illiberal’ regimes, particularly in relation to Iran and Burma.  Some brief/interesting notes:

• Illiberal regimes different now because of the communication spaces that exist – particularly cyberspace – both inside and outside the regime so that it is not possible to be entirely closed anymore. London, for example, is an important discursive and activist space for illiberal regimes. – Mary Kaldor Co-director, Centre for the Study of Global Governance (CSGG)
• In Iran, there are elections every year – a regular and concrete interaction between civil society and state. In these upcoming elections, it is the first time that the dominant civil society activists – women and students – are successfully using alternative media – websites, mobile phones, sms, facebook – to conduct campaigns and participate in the dominant discourse. - Ziba Mir-Hosseini, SOAS
• Burma was highlighted as an example of having an active civil society, but Dr. Maung Zarni feels that a failure of the activist community has been to focus on the political activities of the regime while not also focusing on improving the role of technology and alternative media in the country. He sees ‘news’ as a symbolic good – similar to manufactured goods – and feels activists need to take an economic approach to establishing it as a good – campaigning for electriticity, internet access, etc. Currently, the military is being educated as ‘future leaders’ of the country meaning that even if the regime were liberalized there would still be a significant knowledge gap within civil society which precludes an assumption that progressive politics would be put in place.  Some quick facts: a total estimated internet connection penetration rate is 1% – making Burma the 2nd least connected in the world; per capita income is USD 220, monthly internet charges is 45 USD; no. of cyber cafes – 500 serving 10% of population in 2 major cities. Here one can talk about how to liberalize regimes, but electricity and economic disparity play a major role in holding back the potential and role of civil society. – Dr Maung Zarni Coordinator of the Burma/Myanmar Research Initiative, CSGG
• The role of citizen media in the recent case of Sri Lanka demonstrates a polemic as media propaganda from both sides of civil society make it difficult to know which side to believe or to figure out what is really going on. - Rita Payne, Chair of the Commonwealth Journalists Association, former program leader for BBC Asia.
• An interesting point brought up in the discussion was that encouraging tourism and the private sector in illiberal regimes is a progressive step as these sectors demand access to internet and media. This may explain why Iranian civil society has had much better access to alternative media as opposed to Burma. It was also noted, however, that alternative media in Iran is also being used by the regime for propoganda, which may explain why these media outlets (such as facebook) do not get shut down.

You can listen to the podcast here (its less than an hour).

badlands 2008 (c) corinne silva

Just came across the work of Hey! Hot Shot! contender, Corinne Silva. Her series, Badlands 2008, is a work in progress describing the link between tourism, agriculture and migration through the landscape of Almeria.

I like the concept and approach and I would be interested to see the final edit. The description from her website:

Last weekend I went hiking in Logarska Dolina, a glacial alpine valley in Slovenia bordering Austria and the Kamnik-Savinja Alps.

Trees were definitely on my mind…

logarska dolina (c) marcia chandra 2009

- london, uk, 9 degrees on a clear night, listening to mazzy star’s ‘fade into you’

@ trafalgar square, london, uk – march 2009

you gotta love random elvis impersonators.

- london, uk, 15 degrees, sunny windy day, listening to Bob Marley ‘Stir it up’

These are some of the wonderful people that welcomed me into their homes while I was doing some research/photography in Almeria earlier this month. Almeria is another world from the Spain I am used to seeing, these people are on journeys far removed. How they got to Spain are not simple stories. How they got stranded in Almeria is even more complicated. Most have families that are depending on them, to send money when there is some, to live in limbo for three years until they might be granted residency. Some have gotten farther in their journey, but it took much longer than they expected. One man tells me, “this isn’t a life.” Did they know it would be so hard here and if they had would they have come? But no one chooses this journey when life already offers better choices. It takes strength to move forward.

- London, UK, 10 degrees Celsius, listening to Black Star’s ‘Respiration’

People & landscapes in Almeria, Spain (c) Marcia Chandra 2009

This will be the first in a series of reflexive posts about a recent project I was working on over the spring break (for my MA at the London College of Communication we had to use the time to complete a photoessay project).

Almeria is in the south of Spain in the province of Andalucia (see map). If you look at the map in ’satellite’ view you will be able to see that the entire coast is virtually covered, from the mountains to the sea, in plastic greenhouses – often referred to as “the sea of plastic.” Among the primary products grown here are tomatoes, watermelon, melons and peppers, which are supplied throughout Europe.

Almeria is also one of the jumping-off points for immigrants from North and West Africa who arrive on boats everyday on the coast looking for a new life. Many of them find themselves stuck in Almeria for years until they can earn enough money or learn the language to be able to move on. The horticulture industry is, in fact, sustained by the labour of both illegal and legal immigrants who work on the fields for far below minimum wage and under unhealthy conditions. Native spanish labourers are rare as most of them gave up years ago due to low wages and poor working conditions, forcing the industry to go to Romania and Morocco to find temporary migrant workers to work the fields, and now it is more common to simply hire illegal immigrants that are already in Almeria. The system is complex, and the spanish are divided as to whether they support illegal immigration or not – without it, as one owner of 7 greenhouses told us, the industry would have a hard time finding labour. At the same time, however, no one is eager to act in defense of immigrants as the system depends on virtual servitude labour, on people who are desperate to find work, have almost no rights and even less knowledge about them.

I am just starting to get my head around it all and think about how to move forward. I went to Almeria out of spontaneous curiousity after some other projects I was working on in Granada were dying before they even started. I only spent 3 1/2 days there (its all I had left) but in that time I was lucky to have met so many beautiful people that showed me around and talked to me about their experiences. I’m handing something in for this school project, but the story is incomplete – I want to go back and work more on it over this year.

- London, UK, 15 degrees Celsius, hazy sunny sky, listening to La Cherga ‘Fake No More’

Posted in photography, work in progress Tagged: agriculture, almeria, immigration, mapjd, spain ]]> http://timeislivingme.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/on-the-migration-of-labour-the-social-landscape-of-almerias-greenhouses/feed/ 3 marcia almeria1 http://timeislivingme.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/parkdale-laundromat/ http://timeislivingme.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/parkdale-laundromat/#comments Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:06:16 +0000 marcia http://timeislivingme.wordpress.com/?p=155 ]]>

(c) Marcia Chandra 2008

(c) Marcia Chandra 2008

(c) Marcia Chandra 2008

The emir of bukhara, 1911 (c) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

Just came across the work of the Russian photographer, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944), who appears to have pioneered the use of colour photography in documenting the Russian Empire from 1905-1915; on Wikipedia, it says “…his ultimate goal was to educate the schoolchildren of Russia with his ‘optical colour projections’ of the vast and diverse history, culture, and modernization of the empire.”

Flowers in a vase, 1905-1915 (c) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. Demonstrates the use of 3 negative plates to create a composite colour image.

His photographs are quite beautiful, images of architecture, people at work, ethnic diversity; he also produced the only known colour photograph of Leo Tolstoy. The US Library of Congress now owns all the negative plates known to exist (bought for less than $5000) and you can view them online here or on a Russian site here.

Its quite strange to see images of that era in colour as my mind is so trained to envision those years in black & white or sepia. I would love to see some early colour photographs from America or other parts of Europe – any leads?

A stork (a scene in bukhara), 1911 (c) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

Tolstoy, 1908 (c) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

- London, UK, 15 degrees Celsius, clear night, listening to ‘Un Gaou Oran’ by 113 & Magic System

A few days ago Marco shared a link to an article about a photographer, Klavs Bo Christensen, who was disqualified from the Danish Picture of the Year contest for excessive use of Photoshop… excessive in terms of colour and contrast.

I myself am not a big fan of overly photoshopped images – I have to confess I barely know how to use the program. But since going digital, I do really miss the creativity I had in choosing films for their colours or grain, playing around with the camera and the darkroom. So why should it be wrong to use Photoshop for a little creativity?

It really comes down to a matter of taste. I don’t personally like Klavs’ photos that were submitted – take away the colours and the photos do not really say anything to me. And even if the photos were interesting, the processing would have turned me off. So what the judges should probably ask themselves is whether they like the photos primarily for their content or their aesthetics? And if high contrast and strong colour palettes are what most attracts you, then maybe you shouldn’t be judging the reportage portion of a contest. Otherwise, just don’t give it a prize and leave it at that.

- London, UK, 15 degrees Celsius, clear night, listening to ‘Premier Gaou’ by Magic System

turkish gozelme

are so delicious

its ridiculous

making turkish pancakes in stoke newington (c) marcia chandra

– London, UK, 7 degrees Celsius, overcast, listening to DJ Arems’ ‘Soulove’ mixtape… ohhh yeahhhh….