"Why do you do what you’re doing?"
For three years the photographer Katharina Mouratidi portrayed activists of the Global Justice Movement from 43 countries: farmers and workers, students, reindeer-breeders, native and indigenous people, scientists, Christians, atheists, citizens and revolutionaries. She asked all of them, including many internationally recognized, prominent personalities - like Peace Nobel Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchú and Nobel Prize Laureate for Economics Joseph Stiglitz - the same question:"Why do you do what you’re doing?"
In answering this question, the interviewed related a great deal about their own stories and personal motives for their engagement.
The answers Mouratidi collected are as exceptional as they are varied - spectacular and normal, aggressive, loving, full of longing, idealism and hope, but also moving, alarming, and thought-provoking.
Considered together, they have only one thing in common: the certainty that, for the survival of humanity and our planet, a change in consciousness - leading to another globalisation from which all people profit, as well as to a sustainable relationship with the environment - is absolutely indispensable.
This work has been traveling internationally since September 2005. [ more info ] . Photos are from the Athens' exhibition at Goethe Institute.
