EL PRECIO DE LA TIERRA
Not just a photography project. A long, slow journey, full of questions.
A decade in the Andes to understand the true price of what is extracted from the earth.
10 years · 5 countries · 35+ communities · 81 exhibitions in 29 countries ·
50+ publications · 1 Book · 1 Fanzine · 1 Documentary Film · 1 TEDx talk
For more than ten years, I have followed a single question across the Andes of Peru, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador: what is the true price of what is extracted from the earth? Copper, gold, and lithium travel north to feed a model of development, and now the energy transition as well. What remains here is contaminated water, toxic metals in the blood, divided communities. And people who defend their land with dignity. To tell this story, I changed my life and moved to South America.
Here, the land is not just a resource. It is memory, body, spirit. It is mother and root. At high altitude, where oxygen is scarce but resistance runs deep, extraction does not only dig into the ground: it breaks bonds, divides communities, and turns sacred landscapes into sacrifice zones.
In Espinar, Peru, families live alongside copper mines, with heavy metals in their water and in their bodies. In Ecuador, more than thirty families were forcibly evicted to make way for the Mirador mine. In Andalgalá, Argentina, not a single Saturday has passed since 2010 without a march against the mine. In Potosí, Bolivia, people still die underground searching for minerals. In Chile's Atacama Desert, copper and lithium compete with communities for water.
None of this is accidental. It follows global logics of economic neoliberalism and extractive neocolonialism, which repeat an unequal relationship between North and South, between those who decide and those who resist. And the price is not paid only in the mines. I have seen water become scarce, climate change transform the lives of alpaca herders, entire families harvest fog in order to drink. Each chapter of this work is a different way of asking the same question.
I have also seen Indigenous voices, silenced for centuries, resist. Not through hatred, but through wisdom, organization, oral memory, and spirituality.
This project tries to break down borders: the wounds of Espinar resemble those of Jujuy, the scars of the Atacama Desert are reflected in the mountains of Challhuahuacho. Rather than a political map, I have tried to weave an emotional one, bringing these struggles together as if they were a single voice. My approach is documentary, but with an ethical and poetic intention: I am not only trying to denounce, but to take care in how pain, pride, and hope are told.
Along the way, I learned to listen. To arrive not with answers, but with respect. To understand that accompanying someone does not mean speaking for them, but creating spaces where those voices can travel beyond the mountains. I also learned to recognize my privileges: being able to leave, to choose, to go home with photographs. That is why I know photography can also become a form of extraction, and that the real question is what you leave in return. For me, it means coming back, keeping relationships alive, sharing the work, and accepting that not everything belongs to me, not even what I have photographed. That is how the project returned to the communities, through a fanzine distributed across the Andes and donated copies of the book. And none of this would have been possible without Vidal Merma, a Quechua journalist and activist from Espinar, with whom I have shared much of this journey.
Even in places marked by exploitation, I found rituals, songs, and celebrations, a relationship with nature that defies extraction with a strength that cannot be photographed, only felt.
This work is a visual letter of love and concern for the peoples who care for the earth.
If we keep extracting without listening, what is at risk is not only the environment. It is our ability to imagine a different future.
EL PRECIO DE LA TIERRA
The Journey
EL PRECIO DE LA TIERRA
The Book
10 years · 320,000 photographs in the archive · 206 images in the book
"He not only wanted to tell this story but to live it.
This book is a critique of the impact of colonialism and resource mining across Latin America. But it is also a document honoring a resilient culture."
Sarah Leen, from the preface
“The areas where these minerals are extracted remain the poorest in the country.”
Marcelo Rochabrún, Bloomberg News
For ten years, this project lived in travels, exhibitions, and scattered publications. In 2026, it became my first book.
To get there, I went back through the entire archive, more than 320,000 photographs, one by one. It took a year, and it felt like traveling again. It was beautiful to allow myself that time. And it gave me the greatest privilege: asking myself why the first photographs, the ones I made while I was still living in Italy, were wrong, contaminated by a gaze that was still too Eurocentric.
In the meantime, I had spent ten years living in Lima, and I could look at those images in a different way. I saw the photographer I was in 2017 and followed his evolution, photograph after photograph. The project grew, and I grew with it, as a photographer and as a man. This book is not just a selection of images. It is also the story of that change.
The book was edited by Sarah Leen, former Director of Photography at National Geographic, who followed this work for years and wrote its preface. The editorial project and design are by Santiago Escobar Jaramillo for Raya Editorial. Alongside the photographs are texts by Nelly Luna, Marcelo Rochabrun, and Vidal Merma.
It also exists thanks to those who believed in it before it was real: the hundreds of people who supported it through crowdfunding. And part of the copies returned to the communities where these photographs were made.
“The energy transition will be a fallacy if we continue to ignore the real problem: the uncontrolled growth of energy demand.”
Nelly Luna Amancio, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of OjoPúblico
Book details:
Raya Editorial, first edition April 2026
Landscape format, 19 × 26 cm
266 pages, 206 photographs
Edition of 1,000 copies, 50 special edition, numbered and signed
Printed in Italy by EBS on 135 gsm GardaPat Kiara paper
Texts in Spanish, English, and Italian
Includes a separate booklet with translated captions
Photo editing and preface: Sarah Leen, former Director of Photography at National Geographic
Editorial project and design: Santiago Escobar Jaramillo
Texts: Sarah Leen, Nelly Luna, Marcelo Rochabrun, Vidal Merma, Alessandro Cinque
Post-production: Natalia Alana
With the support of National Geographic Society, Pulitzer Center, Vital Impacts, and CCFD-Terre Solidaire
Behind the scenes: the making of the book
EL PRECIO DE LA TIERRA
Back to the Communities
1 fanzine · 500 copies · 3 countries · 1 collection at the MoMA Library
"Since then, we have shared more than work: we have shared a cause, a struggle, and a brotherhood."
Vidal Merma, Indigenous Quechua Journalist
In 2023, at a critical moment for Peru, I published a fanzine, Perú, un Estado Tóxico, to show what was happening in the Andes. The protests of those months had deep roots: years of hardship for Quechua communities, tied to the country's neoliberal economic policies.
We printed 500 copies and distributed them across the Andes of Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, to inform communities about mining and to open a dialogue between territories facing similar situations hundreds of kilometers apart. The idea was to reach places where local press does not.
Conceived by Santiago Escobar Jaramillo and produced with Raya Editorial, the fanzine has two parts. The cover is made of thick cardboard, so the photographs can be cut out and used. The inside is printed on recycled newsprint. It includes texts by Vidal Merma, Quechua journalist from Espinar; Ariana Kana, activist and municipal council member of Espinar; anthropologist Adela Zhang; campesino leader Claudio Portugal; and Fernando Serrano, environmental health expert at Saint Louis University.
Photo editing by Sarah Leen, post-production by Natalia Alana.
It was made possible by a grant from the National Geographic Society, and it is now part of the permanent collection of the MoMA Library in New York.
The same happened with the book: part of the copies returned to the communities where these photographs were made.
A small limited edition is available for collectors.
EL PRECIO DE LA TIERRA
The Documentary
30 minutes · 3 countries · Spanish with English subtitles
In August 2022, I traveled across Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia to film the communities living alongside large-scale mining. The documentary grew out of the photographic project and tries to bring the same story to a wider audience, comparing three Andean countries facing the same pressures.
It was my first experience as a director, and a deeply transformative one. The film was produced by WeWorld Onlus, an NGO whose long work on mining in Latin America made it possible.
My deepest gratitude goes to the people who shared their stories with us in all three countries.
El Precio de la Tierra is a powerful testament to the resilience of these communities and the complex realities surrounding mining in the Andes.
Credits:
Client: WeWorld Onlus - Director & Director of Photography: Alessandro Cinque - Storytelling: Carla Samon Ros
Language: Original Spanish language, subtitled in English.
EL PRECIO DE LA TIERRA
TEDx Talk
El Precio de la Tierra · TEDxTreviso · 2025
In October 2025, I brought El Precio de la Tierra to the TEDxTreviso stage.
Ten years of work became a talk about what mining leaves behind in the Andes, and about the question at the heart of the project: what is the true price of what we extract from the earth?
EL PRECIO DE LA TIERRA
Exhibitions
81 exhibitions · 29 countries
Over the years, El Precio de la Tierra has traveled far from the Andes. With the Prix Pictet touring exhibition, the work was shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, TOP Museum in Tokyo, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Fotografiska in Stockholm and Shanghai, Arter in Istanbul, Luma Westbau in Zurich, and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva, among many others.
Chapters of the project traveled with the World Press Photo exhibition, from the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam to venues around the world, and with the Sony World Photography Awards, from Somerset House in London to Berlin, Milan, and Tokyo.
In Europe, the project has been shown in solo exhibitions at festivals such as La Gacilly, Cortona On The Move, Baden Photo, and PhEST, at Base Milano with WeWorld, and in Nantes and Aix-en-Provence with CCFD-Terre Solidaire.
In 2025, it was part of the exhibition celebrating the 40th anniversary of Reporters Without Borders in Paris, and in 2026 it opened as a solo show at Xposure in Sharjah, UAE.
But the exhibition that means the most to me had no curator. I have always sent the photographs, through WhatsApp, to the people I photograph. In 2022, an NGO organized a national gathering in Lima for people affected by heavy metals, and invited me. Community leaders from Espinar, Cerro de Pasco, La Oroya, and other territories had traveled to the capital. I had met many of them over the years, on different journeys. The meeting took place in a basketball gym. When I walked in, I saw my photographs on the walls: some of them had printed the files I had sent them long before on photocopy paper, and brought them as evidence of what is happening in their communities.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London - UK
TOP Museum, Tokyo - Japan
Fotografiska, Shanghai - China
EL PRECIO DE LA TIERRA
Tearsheets
+50 publications
Each publication has been a way to bring the voices of these territories into newsrooms and homes far from the Andes, where decisions about mining are often made.
EL PRECIO DE LA TIERRA
Prints
Open Edition · Limited Edition
Limited edition prints are signed, numbered, and come with a certificate of authenticity.
Open edition prints are available in several sizes.
All prints are produced in Italy on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper and shipped worldwide.
EL PRECIO DE LA TIERRA
Support the Project
This project has been independent from the start.
For ten years it has grown through grants, assignments, and the support of people who believed in it.
If you would like to help it continue, you can make a donation.
Any questions? Message me on WhatsApp!
Series: Alpaqueros
Title: Alina, 2021
Year: 2021
Size: Various
Technique: Fine Art Inkjet Pigment print
Paper: Hahnemühle Photo Rag, 305 gsm produced using pigmented Canon Lucia Pro
Signed: No
Limited: No
Certificate:This print does not come with a certificate. It will be imprinted with a dry stamp instead.
Additional Information: Prints are shipped from Italy - The cost of shipping is included in the price worldwide - Delivery time is about two weeks.
If you have a question please contact me at the following address info@alessandrocinque.com