Sony World Photography Award, the Italian photographer of the “cloud catchers” awarded for sustainability
[ad_1]
“I was working on another commission in the poor neighborhoods of Lima, in Peru, and I noticed on the hills some strange green nets, erected on the ridges. I asked around and found out that the locals build them to catch clouds and collect water.” Alexander Five thus tells the genesis of “Atrapanieblas” (literally “cloudcatcher”), the photographic project with which he won the Sustainability Prize of the Sony World Photography Awards.
Conceived in collaboration with the United Nations Foundation and Sony Pictures’ Picture This initiative, the award was launched this year for the first time. The aim, the organizers explain, is to offer visibility to the “stories, people and organizations who, with their actions, pursue one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals”.
The cloud catcher (or fog catcher) Some of Cinque’s photos are structures built with shading nets on the hills of the capital, in the poorest neighborhoods where the campesinos of the Andes settle, often illegally, when they move to the big city to look for work. When clouds and fog pass through them, the networks condense the water and convey it to the cisterns from which it is then distributed to the community. With this method, the inhabitants manage to collect up to 200 liters of water every day, which they don’t have to buy at a high price.
In the invasions of Lima
“The paradox of Lima is that in the richest neighborhoods water costs the right amount. But here, in the invasion (the local name of the settlements, ed) the price is much higher, because there are no infrastructures”, explains Cinque, who moved to the Peruvian capital in 2019.
“The poorest end up having to buy water from companies, which bring it in large cisterns. The paradox is that these people come from villages in the Andes attracted by the capitalist and neoliberal promise of an economic status, and instead find themselves living in settlements where you can buy a TV or a cell phone but no water, or where you have to buy the vegetables that you grew yourself in the Andes”.
At Somerset House, where we were able to preview the images of the winners of all the categories of the award, we review the photos of the series together with Cinque. “He is Abel CruzThe atrapanieblas that I photographed are his idea,” explains the photographer as we linger over the portrait of a man in his sixties, seated against the colorless background of the Lima sky, “la gris” (the gray one) as the locals call it. “Abel it came with one invasion in the 80s, then he was able to study engineering. He’s told me that the fogcatchers are his idea of him, but I know that’s actually not true. For him, however, it is a matter of pride, because this simple and sustainable solution frees an entire community from the economic burden of purchasing water”.
