WHEN TIME LASTS A TON, 2021

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On January 25th, 2019, the collapse of the Córrego do Feijão dam in Minas Gerais, Brazil, released a mudflow that left environmental and humanitarian devastation. A fine iron ore dust hovered invisibly in the air of this district of Brumadinho. This dust is pervasive in several cities due to mining activity in the territory. It is so fine that it sneakily invades the body, contaminating the skin and lungs of those living with it. Although not the first, this was considered the biggest work accident ever recorded in Brazil, causing the death of at least 270 people, the disappearance of many others and the spillage of more than 10 million cubic meters of waste. Caused by the multinational mining company Vale S.A , the collapse left a trail of destruction along its way, contaminating the Paraopeba River, which supplies 35 municipalities in Minas Gerais. It was, and continues to be, a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe. In 2019, the disaster was nationally and internationally televised, documented and commented upon. But what is said about this event after it occurred? Back in 2021, it is the invisible – or what one wants to make invisible – that takes us back to this zone in search of what still reverberated there since the day of the disaster. What could be seen, photographed and experienced two years after that January 2019? How could we create a memory of the unimaginable or even what seemed invisible? What would be the other ways of documenting disasters beyond the moment they occur, beyond the immediate destruction caused by them? From these questions, we decided to sensitively photograph what was still there to be seen, two years after the event – a desolate horizon and abandoned houses now covered by low plants and grass that hides the mud. Using a Zeiss Ikon camera and a 120 mm negative, the photographs are combined without being separated by frames, giving materiality to the diversity of temporal dimensions. When working with a technique that allows to produce a partial overlapping of images, where one frame invades and recomposes the other, it is possible to construct and conjugate many possible landscapes and times. This narration builds a different testimony of the event, focusing on what remains of it. Composed of many layers that are difficult to access, to trigger the memory of those who look at the images, it remembers that the disaster continues to happen.