Winner Geographical Divide category – Árbol de mangos. Agbogbloshie, Accra (Ghana)
Antonio J. Pérez
Photographer
Sevilla (Spain)
The story behind the picture, by the author.
In Accra (Ghana) there is the Agbogbloshie electronic cemetery, mountains of electronic waste from Europe and the United States. This obsolete technology reached a country where the digital divide is huge. The workers, teenagers and children, because of their small hands, work in the contaminated area, without any protection.
As a sign of change and the future, a sculpture representing a mango tree made with old computers and keyboards illuminates the contaminated territory, a space where the digital divide is enormous…
Special Mention Geographical Divide category – Tratando de comunicarme con mis padres en medio de los árboles
Lisnet González
Informal Work
Municipio Guajira (Venezuela)
The story behind the picture, by the author.
While technology advances in many countries, Venezuela lags behind each day. The crisis ongoing crisis has had a very noticeable impact on communication in this time of confinement. Many people were trapped on another side of the city, or in other countries. In Venezuela children and teenagers were left in charge of their grandparents, uncles, even their neighbors, because the parents had to migrate to be able to support their children from abroad, due to the high cost of living.
The Guajira municipality of the Zulia state in on the border with the Republic of Colombia, which has its advantages and disadvantages. One of the advantatges is, in the midst of the chaos of the serious electricity problems, sometimes climbing on a tree or on the roof of their residence, in order to communicate with their loved ones, they can find Colombian signal such as the CLARO, TIGO. Lines that are reachable from high places, while those on the other side of the border can receive the call sitting on a sofa, or lying on the bed in their room, the Venezuelan must speak briefly before running out of battery, or worse, falling from the tree.