Lars Borges

Imperial is the youngest and poorest county in California. Although located in the Colorado Desert on the San Andreas Fault and, with temperatures of up to 50°C and an average annual precipitation of only 75 milimeters, marked by life-threatening conditions, it is one of the main producers of winter vegetables, salads, grain, and alfalfa in the USA. The demand for water is enormous – old water rights ensure Imperial County vast quantities of water from the Colorado River, which is pumped via a network of channels and pipelines into an area as large as the entire metropolitan region of Los Angeles: the largest irrigation system on the North American continent. The unemployment rate is the second highest in the USA – incomes are at the lower end of the scale in otherwise wealthy California. Here, hard-working people, especially Hispanics, labour in the fields to the point of exhaustion, while the homeless, the displaced, and downshifters live the flip-side of the American Dream.
With his impressive landscapes and portraits, the Berlin-based photographer Lars Borges dedicates his book project to these people in an effort to point out the effects of unbridled global capitalism on man and nature.