. FEBRUARY 2013 BACK ISSUE by Tomasz Tomaszewski This photo-essay is the second part of a series (the first part which documents sugar cane production in Java, can be seen in the January 2013 issue)  highlighting six photographers who were commissioned by the Dutch photography organization Noorderlicht to produce "The Sweet and Sour Story of Sugar." The project examines globalization by looking at the sugar industry in the Netherlands and its former colonies.  In Groningen, Tomasz Tomaszewski documented sugar beet production and life directly surrounding the factory. “It took over an hour before I was able to pass through the security gate. It was not the entrance to the emergency room in a hospital, but to a high tech secret laboratory, tasked with the production and refinement of refinement of sugar beet.   So different from my experience in Java, the factory was clean and sanitary. There seemed to be no people and all operations were automatic and computerized.  But it was only an illusion. There where people in the factory and out in the fields harvesting the sugar beet; more than two hundred of them in fact.  All, including me, wearing futuristic safety uniforms and operating state of the art machinery. Despite the slightly joyless, clinical environment, the factory produces something we all consume and take for granted.  Sugar is a great ingredient and source of flavour and pleasure in our modern world.” TT Back to current issue