The pandemic surprised Argentine photographer Alejandro Chaskielberg as he travelled with his daughter Lara through Patagonia. Determined not to return to the city, they faced a long quarantine by exchanging the comforts of their home in Buenos Aires for a small house in the woods where they went through the harsh Patagonian winter.
Lara made her third-grade school with a slow internet connection and no video. They were months of unprecedented creative expansion for both of them where they learned to pick apples, cook mushrooms and raise hares in stark contrast to their usual lifestyle and other situation in cities around the world. In this context, the Natur-e project was born, a new pixelated nature visible through the screens where the fire is used as a metaphor to burn the old normality.
Natur-e is a visual diary of those months spent in the woods, in which Chaskielberg and his daughter tell the process of adapting to this territory and how they remained in contact with the world thanks to technology. A new form of feeling connected with nature and with the world, thanks to the digital interactions that characterize our lives today.
(Argentina, 1977) Chaskielberg is an independent photographer, videographer and teacher, who has established a worldwide reputation for his innovative vision and sensibility that crosses the boundaries between document and art. His working method is the “slow documentary”. He has lived in the islands of the Paraná River Delta for three years, far away from the city and inside the community of islanders, in order to his first book La Creciente, work that was awarded as Photographer of the Year at the Sony World Photography Awards in 2011. He has exhibited his work in many photographic festivals worldwide including Brighton Biennial curated by Martin Parr, Daegu Photo Biennial in South Korea and the Ballarat Photo Biennial in Australia. He has been one of the tutors of the First Latin American Masterclass organised by the World Press Photo and Master at the ISSP - International Summer School of Photography in Latvia. Chaskielberg is currently creating video installations and murals for theatre and opera, while also working as a cinematographer. Recently he gave his first TED talk at the prestigious Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires.