Part of the photographic material has been used in artistic interventions, social actions, and campaigns by environmental organizations, as well as in presentations of bills seeking to regulate fumigation practices in different provinces of Argentina. The images also circulate as educational material in environmental education programs, contributing to the education and awareness of new generations.

La entrada The Human Cost of Agrotoxins se publicó primero en Lawen.

La entrada Oil in the Amazon se publicó primero en Lawen.

This photographic essay moves through those days when thousands of bodies occupied public space to demand dignity. Days when the city was transformed by the sound of pots and pans, the colors of graffiti, and the massive presence of a youth that decided to jump the turnstiles of history. Between state violence and collective imagination, a country emerges, awakening and naming itself.

Because, as could be read on signs, walls, and in people’s voices: Chile awoke. And it was no longer possible to put it back to sleep.

La entrada Chile Awoke se publicó primero en Lawen.

Mapuche: The Return of the Ancient Voices, a project spanning more than seven years by photographer Pablo E. Piovano and journalist Maxi Goldschmidt, portrays lives shaped by a deep connection with nature, spirituality, and the recovery of ancestral knowledge.

This long-term project, which has been exhibited in more than 30 countries, was carried out alongside communities from three regions of Wallmapu —La Araucanía, Vaca Muerta, and the Pilmaiquén River— documenting ceremonies and central aspects of their lives, some of which had been hidden for two hundred years.

As machi Millaray Huichalaf, spiritual leader and reference for her people, says:

“The hardest thing is to be understood by people with another way of thinking. They despised us so much, they mocked our beliefs and customs so much, that one becomes afraid to speak and reveal secrets. But if today we decide to do so, it is so that sensitive and spiritually prepared people may accompany us in the struggle to defend the continuity of life.”

La entrada Mapuche: The Return of the Ancient Voices se publicó primero en Lawen.

La entrada Crude Paradise se publicó primero en Lawen.

On August 28, 2013, the Legislature of the Province of Neuquén voted to approve the agreement between Chevron and YPF, formalizing the beginning of the fracking era in Argentina. Since then, more than 3,000 unconventional oil and gas wells have been drilled.

After more than a decade of exploitation, socio-environmental disasters continue to multiply: land and water contamination, greenhouse gas emissions, disease, drought, earthquakes, radioactive waste, land grabbing, and renewed persecution of Mapuche communities.

Fracking in Vaca Muerta is a documentary photographic and journalistic work that makes visible the consequences of the megaproject presented as “Argentina’s salvation.” At the same time, it brings to light forms of organization and resistance among the affected communities.

For more than six years, this exhibition has traveled through different territories, museums, cultural centers, and other spaces, bringing lesser-known images of fracking in Vaca Muerta closer to the public. It has also helped make the issue visible in the media and counter the prevailing official narrative.

La entrada Fracking in Vaca Muerta se publicó primero en Lawen.

In mid-April, Silvana Olivera’s home ran out of water. She lives on a third floor with her three children. On the third day of drought, she gathered her courage, grabbed some buckets, and crossed the entire neighborhood to where the water trucks were. The lines were endless. “That was when the first case became known.” Four weeks later, there are more than 800: “I believe in social organizations, in the solidarity ties among neighbors, in grassroots militancy. As for the City Government, forget it.”

Our daily stew is prepared by Alicia García at the Arca de Noé soup kitchen, one of the 68 active in the neighborhood. The pot is filled with noodles, zucchini, sweet potato, pumpkin, onion, and meat: “What I miss from before quarantine is talking with the neighbors. Now it’s just filling containers from a distance. I can’t even give them a hug. Because here we are family, you understand?”

She is not a saint, and her name is not María. Karen Ferreyra Vela is a trans sex worker. She has gone two days without eating: “At the soup kitchen there’s a waiting list; first they feed families with children.” In the alleyway, a barrel organ plays, along with the heavenly cumbia chorus of Los Dinos: “Until dawn, we’ll make, we’ll make love.” Karen blows a kiss into the air and whispers: “Don’t you have a little sandwich?”

Lorenza Martínez says she no longer believes in miracles. That is why she is resisting eviction in the middle of quarantine. “It seems like I don’t exist for the government, but here I am, house 215, block 12.” The seamstress with Paraguayan roots chews on her anger behind her homemade face mask. Neither God, nor the Virgin of Caacupé, nor the State gave her a hand: “No, sir, I’m not afraid of the virus. When the people from the government came, I told them that maybe the virus will take me. But I’m not leaving here. This is my home. This is how I’m fighting.”

In the name of Ramona Medina, Víctor Giracoy, and all the neighbors of Villa 31. Amen.

Text: Nicolás G. Recoaro, published in Rolling Stone magazine.

La entrada Villa 31 | Covid se publicó primero en Lawen.

More than a decade ago, machi Millaray Huichalaf was in her early twenties when, guided by what her ancestors told her in dreams, she began to denounce that two hydroelectric plants would affect a sacred river and destroy the natural and spiritual balance of her territory. This film tells the story of the defense of the sacred Pilmaiquén River by hundreds of Mapuche communities.

La entrada Machi Millaray se publicó primero en Lawen.

An unreleased short film by Pablo E. Piovano that, through a poetic and visual letter addressed to his son, explores the deeper reasons behind giving him a Mapuche name. Drawing on the author’s journeys through communities in southern Argentina and Chile, the piece reflects on the memory and resistance of a historically persecuted people, and on their bond with nature and spirituality.

La entrada The Reasons for Your Name se publicó primero en Lawen.

Pablo E. Piovano documents, over nearly a decade, the health and social consequences of the widespread use of pesticides in Argentina. Through direct and moving portraits, this work —which became a reference and gained significant international recognition— reveals the lives of families affected by diseases and malformations linked to the agro-industrial model. Taken in fumigated towns, the images denounce a silent chemical violence that contaminates bodies and territories.

La entrada The Human Cost of Agrotoxins se publicó primero en Lawen.