the black snapper

Alejandro Chaskielberg began the project The High Tide in 2007, and has spent close to two years following the people and environment of the Paraná River Delta. Photographing at night using a view camera using the moonlight and flashlights.

The Paraná River runs over a course of 1,600 miles through Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina and supplies water for more than one hundred million people. It carries millions of tons of suspended sediments, which makes the delta advance numerous meters over the Río de la Plata river every year.

The Lower Delta was the site of the first modern settlements in the Paraná basin and this work focuses on the communities within these islands. Some of the islanders work in the tree-felling season, others fish or grow fruit, but most are isolated without any kind of communication except the River.

The tides control the life of the islanders: with the high tide, they can travel through the small rivers and islands to pick up the wood felled before. With the low tide, they can collect rushes at the shore. In addition to its many electrical dams, the River’s tides change with the sea tides, the wind, and the moon.

Chaskielberg: With my photographs, I create imaginary scenarios with real people and situations. I explore the limits of documentary photography, using technical processes to transform the natural perception of light, color, and space.

I am interested in the poetical and visual power of water, and the relationship between people and the environment. I think that the health of this resource is a worldwide issue today.

Much like a script in my head, I think of my pictures as slides of unfinished stories. The photographs are carefully planned after days of observation and then come into being with the slow process of a large format camera. Using only the light of the moon and flashlights, it can take from five to ten minutes until this thick darkness sprouts what is secret.

My intention is to use photography to occupy a border between document and fiction and imbue the islanders with a strange timelessness. Photography can transform reality and produce a magical view of people and of life.

Weblink: chaskielberg.com