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From my village I can see as much of the universe as can be seen from the earth. Therefore my village is as large as any other place, since I am the same dimension as what I see.
Fernando Pessoa

“O Guardador de Rebanhos” in Poesia de Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa (Assírio & Alvim; Lisboa 2009).

 

As tourists in the Galápagos we experience a place where natural life seems to be in its full splendour. We fly or cruise by boat the archipelago, at times walking in organised field trips, accessing viewpoints where we can observe landscape and natural life from a safe distance. Though no humans inhabit these places and partially our attraction relies on the reassurance that Galápagos could be on the verge of disappearance.

My photographs of the streets and houses of Puerto Ayora and Puerto Baquerizo Moreno question the over-generalisations often made about the Galápagos, especially as they were actually made in locations outside the Galápagos National Park where conservation rules don’t apply.

Most recent emigrants from mainland Ecuador live in the vicinity of La Cascada, a neighbourhood in Puerto Ayora. They started arriving at the Islands in the last 25 years, attracted by prospects of a better life, and they earn their living in the tourist industry: driving taxis and boats, working in restaurants, shops and small hotels and cleaning and doing laundry.

Moving to the archipelago gave them the opportunity to build their own houses, an effort undertaken patiently over months or even years, employing their savings, imagination and skills – a labour of dedication, usually relying on the help of friends or family and working at weekends.

Concrete roads and pavements, street lamps and brick houses are important improvements to the standards of living and the well-being of the inhabitants of the Galápagos. However, the increase in the population of the archipelago presents a constant threat to its fragile ecosystem. All the materials that support human life have to be transported from mainland Ecuador, from water and food to the consumable goods necessary to sustain the tourism industry. All these contradictions seem to tell a story that we already know: the struggle to save the uniqueness of the Galápagos clashes with our Western way of life, how we occupy places, our inability to exist in harmony with nature.

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Galapagos Conservation Trust and the Natural History Museum of London were the residency artists programme partners. The exhibition took place at The BlueCoat, Liverpool (2012), The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edimburgh (2012) and Centro de Arte Moderna, Lisbon (2013), curated by Bergit Arends and Greg Hilty.

 

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