Gold in the Morning 1985, 2002

Since the early 1980s, Alfredo Jaar's work has focused on photography as political witness. He has used his hybrid of installation, photography, text and sculpture to create metaphoric images dealing with the antagonisms between industrialized and developing countries. In the summer of 1985, Jaar spent several weeks in Serra Pelada, a gold mine in the Amazon. This edition, Gold in the Morning, is a portrait of seven miners, their gaze directed toward us. It is the artist’s way of claiming a place and its people, not as our own, but as something deserving of thought, action, and the dignity of identification.