Argentine Identities
A photographer glimpses many cultures in the faces of the country's people.
Argentina is a promised land blessed with incredible beauty and potential. I wanted to create a project that would emphasize its diversity, foster conservation, and empower rural communities to reach their productive and social potential. To support this work, I created a foundation called Biophilia, which means a love for life.
Since I moved here from Italy ten years ago, I’ve seen Argentina’s economy become more and more focused on the large-scale cultivation of genetically modified soybeans. This is tragic, in terms of both culture and biodiversity. I felt the need to do something about this by working to create an alternative approach to a more sustainable future.
So on December 27, 2013, my wife, Juli, and I began a five-month journey across the country. We worked with rural farmers and small-scale food producers to select, conceive, and shape a specific set of projects in four different Argentine regions: the northwestern Altiplano, the northeastern Mesopotamia, the Gran Chaco, and Patagonia. During that research period we produced this series of photographs.
