Paper short abstract:

A collaborative photographic project that connects copper miners from Chile and Ghana, examining the global trajectories of the mineral, elucidating its multifaceted roles across diverse value chains and contextual significances, andd discussing notions of wealth, health, and craftsmanship.

Paper long abstract:

“The lives of Copper” critically examines the global trajectories of the mineral, elucidating its multifaceted roles across diverse value chains and contextual significances. Copper, a pivotal mineral in modern industries and key for the decabornization process, traverses intricate pathways, interconnecting various economic, social, and cultural dimensions on a global scale. This research starts in Antofagasta, Chile, scrutinizing the extraction, production and distribution of copper, and unraveling its journey from mining sites to manufacturing hubs and sea ports. Along with interviews and participant observation, I produced a series of photos of the city and its inhabitants in relation with the copper geography. After that, and tracing the copper pathways to delineate its intricate web of global relationships, I moved to Accra, Ghana, where lies one of the largest e-waste dumps in the world, Agbogbloshie. Thousands of people work there, dismantling cables and electronic appliances to extract and sell copper by its weight. I took the Antofagasta photos there, and invited the workers to intervene them and send visual letters to the Chilean miners. The images were drawn and written upon, in ways that not only emphasized its economic value, but also its symbolic, ritualistic, and historical significance, embodying notions of wealth, health, and craftsmanship. This is an ongoing project that will continue to move around the world, and I would like to present and discuss the method applied and the preliminary results at EASA hoping to discuss the challenges of photographic participatory research, and receive feedback from the anthropology community.