Traces of Nitrate: History and Photography Between Britain and Chile, 1879-1914

该研究项目探讨了英国在智利硝酸盐矿投资的历史和遗产，并参与其全球贩运。通过对现场、人工制品和图像的考察，该项目将追踪硝酸盐的路线，从阿塔卡马沙漠办公室（工厂）中加工的天然矿物状态，到运输商品和股票市场交换价值，最终成为伦敦豪宅和首都周边乡村庄园的材料和象征性遗产的一部分。它提供了新的音频和视频文件，记录了地理上不同但历史上相连的景观、偏远的硝酸盐田和大都市金融区，并对硝酸盐的物质和视觉文化进行了分析。作为肥料和炸药的基本成分，硝酸盐与生死的工业化密切相关，但除了专门研究拉丁美洲经济发展的研究团体外，对其生产和贸易的描述，包括英国商人和冒险资本家所起的关键作用，却相当陌生。因此，这个名为“硝酸盐的痕迹”的项目，通过摄影展览、录像装置、公共活动计划以及针对大学部门内外兴趣团体的学术出版物，直接解决了对硝酸盐工业的重要性缺乏历史理解和文化意识的问题。为了揭开1879年至1914年间英国和智利关系的核心，以及在太平洋战争开始和第一次世界大战爆发之间的这段时间里，它是如何与伦敦金融城、利物浦港口、皮沙瓜和伊基克的财富联系在一起的，该研究还将把硝酸盐定位在全球化进程中，这一进程不仅受到消费文化扩张的影响，而且受到不可再生资源的开采和枯竭的影响。因此，项目名称中的“痕迹”指的是描绘的过程，以及探究的对象：物理遗迹。随着时间的推移，它们的变化将被仔细地绘制出来，以创建硝酸盐文物的“传记”，密切关注矿产财富是如何被收集或被允许消失的，以及20世纪金融景观的保存或再生。持续的档案研究将能够识别特定的地点和物体，但这些硝酸盐工业的记录（例如，Fondo Fotográfico Fundación Universidad de Navarra或Antony Gibbs and Son的论文，Guildhall图书馆）也将被仔细审查，作为使用“外国”或“熟悉”类别的代表，将土地定义为商品或国家，并塑造金融投资者的性格或硝酸盐矿工的身份。收集和分析这些空间、视觉和材料记录将表明英国和智利的历史在哪里交汇和分离，从而深入了解记忆和忘记过去的选择性过程。《硝酸盐的痕迹》涉及当前学术研究的三个领域：殖民主义的视觉文化；当代摄影实践；冲突的物质文化和遗产。它的范围取决于Ribas （PI）和Purbrick （Co-I）在纪实摄影和对视觉和物质文化的解释方面的不同专业知识，以及他们对争议空间和不平等共享遗产的调查的重叠兴趣。作为该项目的一部分，他们将共同指导一名博士生。硝酸盐的痕迹是与智利、西班牙和英国的合作伙伴合作进行的：圣地亚哥UNIACC大学、纳瓦拉大学、潘普洛纳、维尔雷纳图像中心、巴塞罗那、Open Eye画廊、利物浦。

This research project explores the histories and legacies of British investment in Chilean nitrate mines and involvement in its global trafficking. Through an examination of sites, artefacts and images, the project will trace nitrate's route from natural mineral state processed in the oficinas (works) of the Atacama desert through transported commodity and stock market exchange value to become, ultimately, part of the material and symbolic inheritances of London mansions and of estates in the capital's surrounding countryside. It undertakes new audio and visual documentation of geographically disparate but historically connected landscapes, remote nitrate fields and metropolitan financial districts, accompanied by an analysis of nitrate's material and visual culture. As a basic ingredient of both fertilizers and explosives, nitrate was intimately connected with the industrialization of life and death, yet an account of its production and trade, including the pivotal role played by British merchant houses and adventure capitalists, is quite unfamiliar beyond specific research communities devoted to Latin America economic development. Thus, the project entitled Traces of Nitrate, directly addresses a lack of historical understanding and cultural awareness of the significance of the nitrate industry by disseminating its research through a photographic exhibition, video installation, programme of public events as well as scholarly publications aimed at interest groups in and outside the university sector. Seeking to uncover the extent to which a once highly prized mineral was at the centre of the relationship between Britain and Chile between 1879 and 1914 and how, in this period between the beginning of the Pacific War and the outbreak of the First World War, it was connected to fortunes of City of London, ports of Liverpool, Pisagua and Iquique, the research will also locate nitrate within a process of globalization shaped not only by the expansion of consumer culture but also by the extraction and depletion of non-renewable resources. The 'trace' of the project's title thus refers to a process of delineation as well as to the objects of inquiry: the physical remains. Their transformation over time will be carefully mapped to create 'biographies' of nitrate artefacts, paying close attention to how mineral wealth has been collected or allowed to disappear and to the preservation or regeneration of twentieth century landscapes of finance. Sustained archival research will enable the identification of particular places and objects but these records of nitrate industry (for example, photographs within the Fondo Fotográfico Fundación Universidad de Navarra or papers of Antony Gibbs and Son, Guildhall Library) will be also scrutinized as representations that deploy categories of the 'foreign' or 'familiar', define land as a commodity or as a nation and cast the character of the financial investor or identity of nitrate miner. Assembling and analyzing these spatial, visual and material records will indicate where British and Chilean histories converge and separate allowing insights into the selective process of remembering and forgetting the past.Traces of Nitrate engages with three fields of current academic inquiry: visual cultures of colonialism; contemporary photographic practice; the material culture and heritage of conflict. Its scope is dependent upon the different expertise of Ribas (PI) and Purbrick (Co-I) in documentary photography and the interpretation of visual and material culture, respectively, and their overlapping interest in the investigation of contested spaces and unequally shared legacies. As part of the project, they will jointly supervise a doctoral student. Traces of Nitrate is conducted in collaboration with partners in Chile, Spain and Britain: Universidad UNIACC, Santiago, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool.