Hélène et Thomas Chassaing fr / en

Chile - Water Towers

Introduction:

As soon as we arrived in Chile, we had in mind to work on the issue of water. At the COP25 in Madrid in December 2019, we had spoken with Chileans who, in addition to telling us a little about the social revolt that was going on (which led to the conference being held in Spain instead of Chile), had alerted us to the serious drought in part of the country (see the report "Chile after the COP").

In my memory, when I started to be timidly interested in photography at the very end of the 90s, if it wasn't a book by the Master Cartier Bresson that I first opened in the media library of our city, it was a book by the Bechers (a famous couple of photographers) who had methodically made a series of industrial buildings in Germany, including water towers (1). It is therefore often with them in mind that, almost every time we see a water tower on the horizon, we cycle towards it to take a photo.

(1) http://www.artnet.fr/artistes/bernd-and-hilla-becher/ In our exchanges with the population, the theme of water privatisation often came up.

For information about water supply and sanitation in Chile we found these links:

https://fr.qaz.wiki/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Chile

https://www.gauchebdo.ch/2020/02/06/vers-la-deprivatisation-de-leau/

https://www.ciperchile.cl/2014/10/22/el-negocio-del-agua-ley-que-rige-hace-26-anos-asegura-millonarias-utilidades-a-sanitarias/


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