50 images Created 17 Feb 2011
Iceland Karahnjukar Workers
Karahnjukar dam is the largest dam in Europe and one of the most ambitious construction projects of recent times. It also brings to light the huge migration that Europe and the world has experienced in the last decades; a migration of people skilled and unskilled abandoning their homes in search for work. Workers that adapt to unknown conditions, to new cultures and working methods to send home what they earn in expectation of a brighter future.
The temporary work camps, on the shadows of Vatnajokull, Europe's biggest glacier was considered an artificial melting pot of workers of 45 nationalities, mainly from China, Portugal, Pakistan ant Italy all living in about a hundred prefabricated cubic cabins. The cluster of buildings that the men and women call home became Iceland's fifth-largest population centre. Side by side to dormitories, lived families of those workers that opted to take them with them.
Behind the cluster of men and women in their orange thermal uniforms there are personal stories of courage and hope, of stamina and loneliness. Looking into their prefabricated cubic cabins we have spouses with children, men waiting for their next turn to go home, children that go to special schools... workers that cope with isolation, with long hours of darkness and light and of extreme work conditions.
The temporary work camps, on the shadows of Vatnajokull, Europe's biggest glacier was considered an artificial melting pot of workers of 45 nationalities, mainly from China, Portugal, Pakistan ant Italy all living in about a hundred prefabricated cubic cabins. The cluster of buildings that the men and women call home became Iceland's fifth-largest population centre. Side by side to dormitories, lived families of those workers that opted to take them with them.
Behind the cluster of men and women in their orange thermal uniforms there are personal stories of courage and hope, of stamina and loneliness. Looking into their prefabricated cubic cabins we have spouses with children, men waiting for their next turn to go home, children that go to special schools... workers that cope with isolation, with long hours of darkness and light and of extreme work conditions.
