Marion Bernet

Gold

Part of a long term project still in progress about gold. With focus on the international gold business and the lack of fairtrade gold. This first part takes us to Guinea. Besides the artisanal gold mining, the company «Société AngloGold Ashanti de Guinée» (SAG) is mining on an industrial scale and operates several open mining pits around the city of Kintinian. 2015, when SAG announced its plans to open a new mine on the edge of the city, a new conflict erupted. The district named „Area One" includes 380 homes and public places. SAG gained the right to exploit this area and was subsequently obliged to build new houses and to compensate for land and trees. Yet the larger part of the population did not want to move voluntarily, this lead to several protests. People blame SAG for not respecting the Mining Law and accuse the company of fraud regarding the survey of property in order to compensate them with smaller houses. Besides their new homes will be provided way out of the city.

Marion Bernet

Marion Bernet was born 1988 and grew up in Biel Switzerland. Since 2007 her interest in West African music kept her returning regularly to Senegal and Guinea. In 2012 she got her diploma in Fotodesign at the school of art in Zurich and can show here diploma work a year later at the Fotopreis of the Canton of Bern in the capital. With her Portrait about „Frau Burri“, which shows the empty apartment of her former neighbour, she won the VFG-Nachwuchsförderpreis. For the realisation of her work about gold mining in Guinea, she got the Globetrotter World Photo grant. Marion lives in Bern where she works since 2013 as a freelance photographer.