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Το Lens Culture είναι στην ευχάριστη θέση να ανακοινώσει 36 ταλαντούχους φωτογράφους των LensCulture Visual Storytelling Awards 2019 (Βραβεία Οπτικής Αφήγησης).
www.lensculture.com/2019-visual-storytelling-award-winners
Documentary Storytelling Winners
SERIES WINNER
MATJAZ KRIVIC
Slovenia
Lithium: The Driving Force of the 21st Century
Manuel and his family are minig for salt traditional since he was a child.
Him and the rest of the local people living around Salar de Uyuni will get the most effected by the lithium mining in the area which is using most of their fresh water.
They are fearful of the new plant's impact on the local population, whose survival is dependent almost entirely on agriculture that needs water and there's less of it with each passing year.
Salt miners from a Tavua village are loading their truck with salt.
Local people will get the most effected by the lithium mining in the area.
According to Bolivian law the lithium revenues should be equally distributed - the local community is entitled to a 15% cut. The rest goes to the regional government in Potosi and to the central authorities.
Since 2016 none of it was paid to local communities.
Enormous lithium evaporation pools near the Llipi production plant.
Brine is pumped in to this large evaporation pools on the southern edge”Salar de Uyuni”, where it is left to evaporate for many months. It is then processed at Comibol’s Planta Llipi, a lithium process plant near by.
Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia
Production line at Soundon New Energy (SNE), a huge lithium ion battery company with futuristic premises at the outskirts of the polluted city of Xiangtan.
SNE obtains its lithium from China and Chile. The Chinese electric-car and lithium-battery markets are closed to the point of being openly protectionist, which causes the foreign battery manufacturers no end of trouble. China has long embarked on a conquering rampage for resources from South America, Africa to Australia.
»We may be purchasing our own lithium mine soon. We are certainly big enough to be able to afford it,« confided Sophia Peng, head of marketing at the SNE company, one of China's biggest producers of lithium batteries.
Xiangtang, China
This extremely remote region is one of the coldest in the world. For this reason, number of Chinese electric-car manufacturers had chosen it as their winter testing site for their new prototype electric cars, like this prototype EV of Chinese Slovenian joint venture APG Elaphe. Here in the middle of nowhere, the Chinese engineers are taking the future for a test spin.
Heihe, China
While most of the world still sees the possibility of electric mobility and zero CO2 emissions as a science-fiction scenario, it is already an existing reality in Norway.
In October 2018, more electric vehicles (EV's) were sold in Norway than gasoline & diesel cars combined. This is a historical milestone: technological, political, social, economical and, of course, environmental milestone.
Dinner at the Zero CO2 Maritime conference in Bergen.
Bergen, Norway
Given the steep rise in city population and pollution all over the world, many Chinese electric-car manufacturers have decided to focus entirely on urban traffic. At the moment, more than 200 electric-vehicle manufacturers are operating in China.
In 2017 more than 300K EV’s had been sold in China – 3x as many as in the USA.
ZD is a small Chinese EV company form Linyi county, one of China's greatest producers of small two-seater urban electric cars.
ZD also assembles its own lithium battery packs. Its lithium carbonate is wholly “home-grown”, and its battery cells are purchased on the open market. »There is never enough of them! Never enough! There's a huge battle for resources.« says Mr. Lee head of international marketing and sales at the ZD company.
Line County, China
ZD is the first Chinese manufacturer to penetrate the demanding and heavily regulated European market. Working with their Italian business partners who had designed the vehicles, ZD had gained a beach-head in Italy four years ago.
Right now some 100K small urban two seater ZD e-cars can be found on the roads in China, South Korea, Italy and Slovakia. 40K of them had been produced in 2017.
US companies are intensively and aggressively seeking out fresh deposits of lithium all over the world, including on its own soil.
A global lithium fever started back in 2016 and hasn't let up.
Luke is a young local driller working for a small family bussines (David Gibson Contractor L.L.C.) at a Railroad valley salar in Nevada. They are drilling a new hole for a “3PL”, a lithium mining company from Canada that has that has been prospecting the area. They have claimed preety much the whole salar, expecting to find big deposits of lithium.
Nevada, USA
An aerial view of the polluted city Harbin waking up in the cold morning.
At the moment, some 120 million cars are jostling on the Chinese roads. By 2020, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology predicts an additional 80 million will have entered the fray.
Combined with all the industry and too many coal power plants most of the cities in China are very or most of the time too polluted.
Harbin, China
SINGLE IMAGE WINNER
JOAN SOROLLA
Spain
The Dead Deer
Imaginative Storytelling Winners
SERIES WINNER
JULIA FULLERTON-BATTEN
United Kingdom
Old Father Thames, 2018
SINGLE IMAGE WINNER
TANIA FRANCO KLEIN
Mexico
Long Story Short
Επιλογές Κριτικής Επιτροπής (Jurors’ Picks)
