Salt of the Earth

The vast, gleaming white expanse of Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt desert in the world, measuring over 10.5 square kilometers and containing over 10 billion tons of the crystalline mineral. Until recently, tourism and salt mining were the main industries of this inhospitable place, where temperatures can plummet to -20ºC at night. In the past 12 months the flats have come to represent a new hope for Bolivia as the world’s largest reserve of the light metal lithium, which it is thought will be used increasingly to create super-efficient batteries for a new breed of ecologically sound electric cars. NOWNESS presents an exclusive series of images from photographer Caroll Taveras, who traveled to Bolivia in 2007 to document the lives of the salt miners who live and work there.