Michele Palazzi
Italy
Black Gold Hotel
Black Gold Hotel
In the last decade the economy of Mongolia has grown at an unprecedented rate, with GDP expanding by more than 10% per year. All this mostly depends on the mining industry: attracted by the large deposits of copper, gold and most of all coal, all of the industry’s global giants have invested and invest in this small country of Central Asia.
In this accelerated and deregulated development local populations and traditional ways of life, based on ancestral nomadic herding along routes across the steppes, are undergoing a crisis. Many families have left their activities and moved in large urban centres in search of work opportunities in this new industrial society, often slipping into economic and social poverty. Others, however, try to resist, dealing every day with pollution, dusts that poison the vegetation, and living conditions which get more and more difficult every day.
The long term project Black Gold Hotel is a journey in the daily lives of people all over the country, from the families in the Gobi desert that chose to continue the tradition of the steppe despite all difficulties to the young people in UlaanBaatar that live, consume and have fun in a way more and more similar to their western peers’.
Michele Palazzi
Michele Palazzi was born in Rome in 1984. After gaining a masters degree in Photography at the Scuola Romana di Fotografia, he started working as a documentary photographer. Between 2010 and 2011 he has worked on the project Migrant Workers Journey recipient of the Project LaunchAward 2011 at CenterSanta Fe. In 2013 he received the First Prize of Environmental Photographer of the Year Award. From 2012 he has worked on Black Gold Hotel a long term project about the modernization impact in Mongolia.
