All That Is Copper Will Be Gold, 2022 - 2025
A woman waits anxiously for her name to be called in a dimly lit corridor of a public healthcare office. After more than three decades as a physican in Panama’s public health system, she is here to sign the final paperwork for her pension. It is a quiet, unceremonious moment marking the end of a lifelong commitment to serving others. That woman is my mother, a figure who represents countless public servants sustaining fragile systems with unseen labor. Elsewhere, on Panama’s Pacific coast, a man arranges souvenirs on a wooden stand in a town overshadowed by looming real estate projects: public beaches giving way to private enclaves.
These personal scenes unfold against a national backdrop where promises of prosperity often come at a cost. Recent protests over a controversial copper mining contract exposed the environmental damage of extractive economies: deforestation, poisoned rivers, and fractured ecosystems. Yet only months after these protests, voters elected a pro-mining president, a choice that underscores the complexity of hope and survival in a system built on extraction. Each story is bound by a common thread, the relentless exchange of what is essential for what is profitable.
The images in this series were captured over multiple trips to Panama, including during the pandemic, observing fragments of daily life. As part of the process, I intervened on the prints with copper leaf, questioning what truly holds value. This work is a meditation on resilience and contradiction in a country where personal histories intersect with broader narratives of extraction and transformation.
