The seminar Traces of Nitrate, organized by the Museum of the University of Navarra and the MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona) presented on October 10 the research of photographers Xavier Ribas and Ignacio Acosta and historian Louise Purbrick. The study 'Traces of Nitrate. Mining History and Photography Between Britain and Chile', focused on the 19th and 20th centuries, is based on the comparison of the global circulation of photography with the circulation of merchandise and financial capital.

The project takes the form of a photographic essay, composed of different series of photographs, grids, archival materials.... These records revolve around three axes: the representation of the Atacama Desert as a frontier territory, the representations of the worker and labor and how these representations are possible in the present, and thirdly, it deals with the flows of capital between geographically distant places.

The origin of the project

During one of his visits to the Museum's collection, Xavier Ribas was particularly struck by the photograph album "Oficina Alianza and Port of Iquique" . This album reflects the extraction of nitrates by workers in Chile. The photographs document the process of extraction, refining and transportation of the material by British companies with Chilean labor.

This album of more than 70 photographs, belonging to the collection of Museo Universidad de Navarra, became the central pillar of the research. What motivated the beginning of this work was the realization that the nitrate industry left a great legacy in the contemporary history of Chile, and that this did not occur in Great Britain, where the articulation of the historical memory of this link with Chile is limited to the work of some Latin American studies departments, which from 1970 onwards, became interested in the Allende revolution.

Project evolution

More specifically, Xavier and Louise's project deals with the British legacy in Chile's nitrate mines and its involvement in the global trade between 1890 and 1920. Their research follows the evolution of nitrate from its mineral state, processed in factories in the Atacama Desert, its commercialization and stock market value, to becoming part of Britain's heritage.

It is a natural, non-renewable resource, extracted from the Atacama Desert by foreign capitalist investments, mainly British, who transformed a part of that desert into an industrial landscape. "Nitrate was used as a fertilizer in agriculture, but also in the manufacture of explosives, so it is related to the industrialization of both life and death," said Xavier Ribas. In this way and thanks to the photographs, it is possible to document the process of extraction, refinement and transport of nitrate by British companies with Chilean labor, which represent the work of these workers as if it were a natural resource.

The project is temporarily framed by the effects of two wars that delimit what some historians have called the British Saltpeter Era. On the one hand, the War of the Pacific, between Chile, Peru and Bolivia, which arose from disputes over the Atacama territory, belonging at that time to Peru and Bolivia, and over Chilean interests in that area. On the other hand, the end of the First World War, in which the British interest in Chilean nitrate began to decline, due to the strong competition of nitrogen artificially produced by Germany. By the 1930s, there was little British capital left invested in Chile.

"Like petroleum, nitrate disappears the moment it is consumed, it leaves no trace, except for a light form of contamination. The question of the project was how to visually articulate this history of exploitation in the Atacama Desert through the residues, fragments and disappearances of nitrate," Ribas explained.

In this seminar, apart from the photographer Xavier Ribas and the historian Louise Purbrick, both professors at the University of Brighton, the historian of the labor movement at the University of Chile, Pablo Artaza; the historian of photography, Andrea Jösch; and the historian and photographer of the National Archive of Catalonia, Ricardo González, together with the curator of the same, Mercedes Fernández, were also present.

Xavier Ribas in Tender Puentes

The "Tender Puentes " initiative has been promoted by the University Museum since 2002 to encourage dialogue between contemporary photographers and the works of pioneering photographers in Spain in the 19th century, visible in the Museum's Collection. Xavier Ribas carried out the project 'Concrete Geographies (Ceuta and Melilla)' which includes two photographic grids of 22 and 26 photographs each, in which the author visualizes the landscape defined by these fences that delimit at the same time a colonial/national border between Spain and Morocco, an economic border between Europe and Africa, a geopolitical border between North and South and a religious border between Christianity and Islam.