Quiulacocha
Quiulacocha is a visual essay that uses photographic alchemy as a medium and metaphor to address the impact of mining on the health of the inhabitants of Cerro de Pasco, the epicenter of mining activity in Peru and one of the most polluted places in the world.
I collected water samples from Quiulacocha, an ancient lake in Cerro de Pasco, to use in the development of photographs. The contaminated liquid left marks and damage on the photographs that imitate, from their symbolic equivalence, the deterioration of the body when in contact with heavy metals, which have been detected in various blood tests of the population. I wanted to “reveal” the corrosive health and environmental impacts of mining that we would rather not see.
Quiulacocha, named in Quechua for the Andean seagulls that once flocked to its shores from the Pacific coast, today no sign of life survives there. Instead, the lake contains more than 600,000 cubic meters of mining waste, left over decades by miners, and a list of heavy metals that are harmful to health and the environment: lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, aluminum, boron, copper, cobalt, iron, manganese and selenium.
