B/W photograph taken in John Bradford village, Chuquicamata, Chile.
These houses are now covered by tons of sterile material from the copper mine.

"Michelle-Marie Letelier's project is titled ERASE and it comes from an acid view on its multiple definition. On one side, you can understand it as the start in a story; “Erase una vez...”. And on the other hand, the word translated in English, to erase. Her work concentrates on the act of erasing a family space in which she gives the opportunity to pronounce it as the Spanish storytelling phrase “Once upon a time”. Taking this fable in function, the phrase makes us wonder in the habitability conditions of mining camp as an institutional concentration model. The “waist dumps” cover the urban installations. The miners have been moved. The basic installations, such as housing and hospital, are already covered by tons of material. Michelle Letelier has made this register of concealment a model of exceptional work".

Justo Pastor Mellado
2002