I was interested in capturing the isolation of the seaweed farmers who at times appear dwarfed in relation to the sea and the horizon. There is something sublime about the way in which the women looking outwards towards the horizon line across the vast expanses of ocean and sandbars at low tide seem so distant, so detached and so protected from the intrusive technology and architecture of modern life. There is something sacred about the seaweed farmers’ proximity to nature.  In the total absence of intrusive mechanical machinery, the direct contact between their hands, the water and the seaweed, evokes memories of timeless images of women laborers such as Jean-Francois Millet’s Gleaners. The thin thread that connects these seaweed farmers to the global economy of the 21st Century is growing more fragile by the day as poverty levels rise and environmental and economic activities like seaweed farming become increasingly unsustainable.    

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Anthropology/ethnography, Globalization, Women, The human condition, Work, Economic Development, Poverty

Joanna Lipper

www.dubois.fas.harvard.edu/joanna-lipper

jlipper@fas.harvard.edu