Photojournalism: Honorable Mention 2019 (professional)
ENTRY DESCRIPTION
Finding tin.
A miner at work in illegally mining area, South-West of Uganda, 2019.
Uganda is rich in natural resource wealth such as gold, tin and phosphate, but most of miners are working in dangerous, largely unregulated conditions. Also many children are exposed to toxic chemicals on a daily basis.
This photo is part of my long term project “Black World”, started in 2012 and still in progress, focused on different kind of illegally extractions of minerals around the world.
The title is thinked because it's a dark world where millions of people are forced to work in, made of mines, dust and fear.
I travelled in several countries, Burkina Faso, Colombia, D.R.Congo, India, Philippines, Uganda: different places, different minerals, different kind of illegality, but always characterized by oppression, violence and trampled human rights; where the presence of enormous deposits of minerals transform into a curse for the people through the illegality caused by games of power and corrupt economies.
AUTHOR
Erberto Zani is an Italian freelance photojournalist based between Parma (Italy) and Basel (Switzerland). Since 2008 he focused on capturing people’s daily life, strength in their environments. His work documents social and environmental issues, systemic inequalities, cultural traditions.
His photo has been published on BBC Newsround, Cnn Travel, Der Spiegel, El Pais, Financial Times, Lonely Planet, The Economist, The Times, among others.
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