In the vicinity of the southern Spanish tourist resorts along the Almería coastline, around 3.5 billion kilos of vegetables and fruit are grown each year. What does the world behind this largest greenhouse complex in Europe look like? This autumn at Kunsthal Rotterdam, the photographer Rob Hornstra and the author Arnold van Bruggen will show how countless migrants who have no legal residency status have to work under abominable circumstances to produce food for European markets. Their photographs and stories are part of the large-scale project The Europeans, in which Hornstra and Van Bruggen set out to capture contemporary Europe.
Both the exhibition Plastic Sea, Perfect Storm and the publication of the same name reveal how around 150 thousand people have to work six day working weeks under miserable conditions. As temperatures regularly rise above fifty degrees Celsius during the day, these migrants are often forced to work at night. The vegetables and fruit they grow are available in supermarkets across Europe, including those in the Netherlands. The byproduct of this industry, around 6 billion kilos of plastic waste a year, finds its way to illegal dumping grounds, 400 of which are spread across southern Spain alone.
Surrounded by plastic
Hornstra and Van Bruggen have portrayed these migrants while living their lives in a world dominated by plastic. Under miserable conditions they live among the plastic greenhouses, in self-built shacks made from discarded pallets. Waste materials drift freely across the vast plains and become part of the landscape. Together, the photographs and stories paint an impressive picture of lives that usually remain hidden from the eyes of the world.
