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The magazine of the art-form of the photo-essay “A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine.  Fabulous!” Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film & documentary maker
March 2015 back issue
Gold & Silver Mining Peru
by Sean Hawkey
Santa Filomena, Ayacucho, Peru. The village houses miners and their families, there are no other sources of employment in the area. Tintype image taken with lens made by Claude Berthiot, Paris, in the 19th century.
The light at the end of the tunnel. Going underground at SOTRAMI's Santa Rosa mine in Santa Filomena, Ayacucho, Peru. SOTRAMI is a Fairtrade-certified producer of precious metals.
Tintype portraits from the SOTRAMI gold and silver mine in Santa Filomena, Peru. These are scans of collodion wetplate photographs.
Preparing to dynamite a road into SOTRAMI's Santa Rosa mine in Santa Filomena, Ayacucho, Peru. A miner slices through the side of dynamite sticks to generate a lateral explosion from the dynamite.
Tintype portraits from the SOTRAMI gold and silver mine in Santa Filomena, Peru. These are scans of collodion wetplate photographs.
Preparing to dynamite a road into SOTRAMI's Santa Rosa mine in Santa Filomena, Ayacucho, Peru.
Tintype portraits from the SOTRAMI gold and silver mine in Santa Filomena, Peru. These are scans of collodion wetplate photographs.
Miners deep underground at SOTRAMI's Santa Rosa mine in Santa Filomena, drilling to place dynamite.
Tintype portraits from the SOTRAMI gold and silver mine in Santa Filomena, Peru. These are scans of collodion wetplate photographs.
Miners deep underground at SOTRAMI's Santa Rosa mine in Santa Filomena, extracting a drill while preparing to dynamite.
Tintype portraits from the SOTRAMI gold and silver mine in Santa Filomena, Peru. These are scans of collodion wetplate photographs.
The environment in the Santa Filomena area is so dry that there aren't even any cactuses. All water for the miners has to be brought up into the mining camp. This is the road to Santa Filomena.
Tintype portraits from the SOTRAMI gold and silver mine in Santa Filomena, Peru. These are scans of collodion wetplate photographs.
An ingot of Fairtrade-certified gold and silver is cleaned up at the SOTRAMI foundry.
Tintype portraits from the SOTRAMI gold and silver mine in Santa Filomena, Peru. These are scans of collodion wetplate photographs.
An ingot of Fairtrade-certified gold and silver is poured at the SOTRAMI foundry.
Tintype portraits from the SOTRAMI gold and silver mine in Santa Filomena, Peru. These are scans of collodion wetplate photographs.
An ingot of Fairtrade-certified gold and silver is poured at the SOTRAMI foundry near Santa Filomena, Ayacucho, Peru. The metalurgist wears fireproof clothing.
Tintype portraits from the SOTRAMI gold and silver mine in Santa Filomena, Peru. These are scans of collodion wetplate photographs.
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To make portraits of miners inside a silver mine in Peru I used photographic techniques from 1851 - wetplate collodion - and I made tintype images straight onto metal plates. And for the chemistry I used the silver from the mine, converting it into silver nitrate using nitric acid. I used a lens from 1867 wth a large format wooden camera with bellows. The project was technically and logistically complicated, it was complicated to get everything to Peru, then to the mining area, in a desert at high altitude, and to work underground in a dusty, hot, and completely dry environment. The wetplates, that have to stay wet through the whole process, were drying out almost instantly. I had to use Inca Cola as a restrainer to slow the chemical reactions. The sensitivity of the chemistry on the plates is ISO 1, so the exposures are long, typically 12 to 15 seconds, so I had to use a headbrace to keep the miners’ heads still, and people can’t sustain a smile for that long without it looking strained and false, so they look quite serious, but the result, as well as the powerful aesthetic of wetplate, I think, is always a deeper, more revealing portrait, stripped of anything superficial, stripped of vanities and practiced expressions. The miners loved the whole process, they sometimes cheered when they’d see the image revealed in the fixer. It was a lot of fun, once I got it to work. I spent three weeks on the project, after months of planning. Having spent years working digitally, it was good to get back to photography as a craft, photography I could touch, and smell, and chemicals that could kill me, it’s a thrill, and a completely different experience from digital photography, I loved processing on a bench and in red light, rather than on a computer. I have a couple more mining series coming up, where I connect miners with the element they mine, through the photographic process. The SOTRAMI mine in Peru, where I did the project, is a Fairtrade-certified mine. Fairtrade are currently running a campgaign on Fairtrade gold: http://ido.fairtrade.org.uk/
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