Selected Publications:

The Mineral Landscape Has a Blue Sky and Two White Mountains

This long-term project has been evolving since 2015. It began as an open photographic journey through the Atacama Desert, driven by a simple question: how can a territory be understood before it is defined by a dominant visual narrative? Unlike landscapes such as Arizona, Tuscany or London, the Atacama seemed to resist a single collective imaginary. I wanted to approach it without a predetermined story, allowing the landscape itself to reveal its own language.

As the work developed over years of repeated journeys, what initially appeared as a survey of roadside infrastructures gradually unfolded into a much broader investigation. The photographs began to trace the long history of extraction that has shaped northern Chile and Bolivia, from the nineteenth-century saltpetre industry to today’s lithium economy. Yet the project increasingly moved away from extraction itself and towards the people, relationships and contradictions embedded within these landscapes.

Rather than documenting mining as an isolated subject, the work explores the complex realities of those who inhabit extractive territories. Here, environmental concerns coexist with economic dependence; resistance can exist alongside participation; and the same individual may oppose an industry while relying on it for their livelihood. These tensions resist simplified readings and challenge the binary narratives that often frame discussions about resource extraction.

The project is therefore less interested in taking a position than in creating a space for reflection. It questions the distance between external narratives—often shaped by environmental, political or economic perspectives—and the lived experiences of those whose daily lives unfold within these landscapes. Avoiding both romanticization and condemnation, the photographs seek to preserve this ambiguity as an essential condition of the territory itself.

Visually, the work often evokes the language of science fiction. Industrial infrastructures, salt flats and deserts become landscapes that appear almost extraterrestrial. Yet everything depicted is entirely real. The apparent abstraction of these places reflects not an imagined future, but the contemporary transformation of one of the world’s most fragile environments.

Part of this work has been exhibited and published internationally. Today, the project continues to expand through collaborative, transdisciplinary and transmedia approaches, seeking new ways to deepen the conversation around landscapes, extraction and the multiple realities that coexist within them.

NYT Lithium assignment : https://www.nytimes.com/es/2021/12/28/espanol/chile-consitucion-cambio-climatico.html 
POY Latam winers: https://poylatam.photoshelter.com/gallery/Marcos-Zegers-2ndo-premio/G0000I_vp6eGt8Vs/C00004d1vAGzqiAw
Artsy Magazine, NYC: https://www.artsy.net/aipad-2019/info/artsy-at-the-fair
Noice Magazine, USA: https://www.noicemagazine.com/interview-and-features/marcos-zegers
The Modern Day Explorer: https://www.themoderndayexplorer.com/journal/mining-and-exodus-atacama-desert
Joia Magazine, Chile: http://joiamagazine.com/lo-mejor-de-pictures-of-the-year-latam-2019-primera-parte/
A-Desk Magazine, Spain. Text by Rodolfo Andaur https://a-desk.org/spotlight/naturales-documentos-y-exodos-sobre-marcos-zegers/
Arch Daily, Text by Belen Maiztegui https://www.plataformaarquitectura.cl/cl/941762/agua-mineria-y-exodo-las-consecuencias-paisajisticas-de-las-actividades-extractivas-en-el-norte-de-chile

Ignant Magazine UK, 2020 https://www.ignant.com/2020/09/21/marcos-zegers-photographs-the-poignant-impact-of-mining-on-chiles-atacama-desert/