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FT Magazine Life & Arts 
Photographer Lisa Barnard’s personal journey through the world of gold

Electronic waste is one of the fastest-growing sources of rubbish in the world. These discarded
devices can be highly toxic, containing lead and mercury. But something else is embedded in the
tangle of circuitry from computers, televisions, cameras and phones: gold.

That precious metal is a fascination of Lisa Barnard’s, the British photographic artist. For her new
work, The Canary and the Hammer, she spent four years travelling across four continents,
photographing artisan gold recyclers in China, gold miners in California, gold sorters in Peru and
workers at a gold nanoparticle lab in the UK. Gold does not just reflect the mood of the global
economy, Barnard says — it is “a potent symbol of ultimate value, beauty, purity, greed and
political power”.

During the California gold rush in the 19th century, Chinese miners went to the US, taking poorly
paid, often exploitative jobs, in search of wealth. Today, the US is one of the world’s largest
producers of “e-waste”, and China a top importer. Workers there “mine” unwanted electronics for
profit, exposing themselves to hazardous substances as they harvest gold on an industrial scale.

It is these kinds of connections, between seemingly disparate subjects, that the photographer tries
to draw out in her work: they are all part of the “cycle of capitalism”.

A circuit board at an artisan electronic

waste or ‘e-waste’ recycling factory in
Shenzhen, China. China is a top importer of
e-waste, which it often contains gold, but
‘mining’ for it is a dangerous and toxic
process © Lisa Barnard
 A bottle of colloidal gold used for the production of
gold nanoparticles at BBI Solutions, Cardiff.
Applications include the detection of biomarkers in
the diagnosis of heart diseases, cancers and
infectious agents © Lisa Barnard

“The art market is so focused on creating a linear narrative,” says Barnard, who teaches at the
University of South Wales. “I wanted to do the complete opposite.” Her aim is to showcase “a very
fragmented world” that stimulates and excites. Using a range of aesthetics — traditional
landscapes, portraits and still life, plus archival material and digital imagery — she goes on “a
personal journey” through the troubled world of gold over different periods in its complex history.

Santa Filomena, in Peru’s Atacama Desert, is home

to the Sotrami mine, the world’s largest supplier
of Fairtrade gold. The accompanying 3D graphic
shows the mines and tunnels that run beneath the
village © Lisa Barnard

Both these portraits show Sotrami mineral sorters or

‘pallaqueras’. Barnard printed them on thin Japanese paper
backed by gold leaf from the mine – a variation on the historic
orotone technique © Lisa Barnard

The Sotrami mine employs 180 mineral sorters or ‘pallaqueras’,

who laboriously sift through dangerous piles of unstable ‘tailings’
brought to the surface by miners, in search of gold ore © Lisa
Barnard

That story includes the English colonisers of the 1600s, who went in search of the mineral
resources thought to be “glittering” on the shores of North America. Barnard made photo
etchings, on aluminium, of the remains of a building at the original settlement in Jamestown. She
also incorporates Operation Fish into the work, which saw the evacuation of gold reserves from
the UK to Canada by sea during the second world war, in one of the biggest transfers of wealth in
history.
 A ‘pallaquera’ holding a piece of gold ore; the role of the
‘pallaqueras’ within the mining sector’s value chain was finally
recognised by the Peruvian government in July 2018 after
many decades of labour © Lisa Barnard

A woman watching the ‘pallaqueras’ work. ‘Pallaqueras’ are

always women, while miners are always men, as local myth
has it that if women descend through the veins of the belly
into the mines, the gold will disappear into the bowels of
mountain © Lisa Barnard

Gold is seen as a safe-haven asset, with investors flocking to it during times of economic crisis. But
for Barnard it is also a symbol of the ruthlessness of the pursuit of endless growth and riches. Her
intensely political work is a response to the financial crisis of 2008: “You can’t have capitalism
without exploitation of the earth.” Humans, she says, have plundered natural resources and
territory throughout history. “The only thing we see when we look at the earth is to exploit it in
every sense” — both the land itself and the people who inhabit it.

Abandoned homes near the town of Coulterville,

California; the town was named after George
Coulter, one of the first white men to arrive at a
gold camp established by Chinese miners in the
1850s © Lisa Barnard
 Victor Gray Wolf prospecting or ‘sniping’ for gold on the Bear River,
California. Snipers use a mask and snorkel to search for high-grade
pockets in a stream where gold may be hiding and then use simple tools
to extract it © Lisa Barnard

In The Canary and The Hammer, and its accompanying book and interactive website, Barnard also
explores the sexual politics of the mining industry today, through the female mineral sorters of
Santa Filomena in Peru. They search the ore at ground level for pieces of gold, yet their work is
considered inferior to that of the male miners and engineers who descend into the mines below.

“There is a disconnect between the lives of the men and the lives of the women,” Barnard says.
She used gold leaf in her portraits of the sorters, in a twist on the historic orotone technique.
Rather than printing on the traditional glass plates, she chose thin, translucent Japanese paper,
backed by the gold leaf, to produce a more subtle effect. “It’s a way for me to give value to what
they do.”

Gold jewellery under a plastic cover photographed by Barnard in New York.

She spent four years travelling across four continents to explore different
periods in gold’s ‘troubled history’ – and our complex relationship with the
metal © Lisa Barnard

A plant with light-emitting leaves that could eventually replace street

lamps is one potential application of experiments being conducted at
South China Normal University on the photoluminescent properties of
gold nanoparticles © Lisa Barnard
 A bottle of photoluminescent gold nanoparticles. Gold’s
unique optoelectronic properties are used in many advanced
technological applications, including the eradication of
tumours and cutting-edge malaria tests © Lisa Barnard

As part of the project, Barnard visited Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, where gold
is used in hundreds of applications. She believes that outer space is capitalism’s next frontier, as
the world searches for new territory to pillage. Asteroids could contain hundreds of trillions of
dollars of raw materials that await discovery, but that is constrained, for now, by technological
limitations and high costs.

Asteroid 1. Barnard created these three screen prints from images

of asteroids originally produced by Nasa. As part of her project,
she visited Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland,
where gold is used in hundreds of applications © Lisa Barnard

Asteroid 2. Many asteroids are estimated to contain hundreds of

trillions of dollars in raw materials and resources. Bernard believes
that outer space is will be capitalism’s next frontier, as the world
searches for new territory to pillage © Lisa Barnard

Barnard did not want to limit her work to gold’s destructive effects. She is fascinated by its role in
sophisticated technologies and medicine, from the gold nanoparticles used to help diagnose heart
disease to the conductors in printable inks. “This is the great contradiction,” she says. “Gold is also
advancing technology in such a way that it could end up helping and supporting the planet.”

Asteroid 3. With the passing of the 2015 ‘Space Act’, US citizens have the
theoretical right to mine celestial bodies. However, such activity is constrained
– for now – by technological limitations and the high costs involved © Lisa
Barnard

An ultraviolet camera spectrograph or UVC, on show at Nasa’s

Goddard Space Flight Center; the same model was placed on the
surface of the Moon by Apollo 16 astronauts, where it remains today
© Lisa Barnard
The scope of Barnard’s work is broad because she wanted to capture her subject from different
sides. “I could have just gone to a mine in South Africa, but I wouldn’t have been able to reference
the ubiquitous nature of gold and the complex relationship we have with it,” she says. “I wanted
the body of work to reflect that, and ultimately show that capitalism is both the curse and the cure
of society.”

Anjli Raval is the FT’s senior energy correspondent

The Canary and The Hammer by Lisa Barnard will be published by MACK Books in September

This work will be exhibited in a group show “Her Ground: Women Photographing Landscape” at
Flowers Galleryuntil August 31; flowersgallery.com