THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

Theirs is one of the highest houses on the planet, in the last and thinnest layer of human habitation, at an altitude of almost 4,000 metres, where they are almost alone.  The[ir] hut looks out over the altiplano, the Andean high plateau, a plain of ochre and salt that shimmers under the sun, dissolving into an aspirin-coloured sky.  Not a single tree grows up here.  Everything is stone and light.  Here and there a hill bulges out, but it is as if the world is tired by the time it makes it to this height, and that’s why the eruption of Cerro Rico is so impressive: a peak that stands 1,000 metres above the exhausted altiplano.  The city Potosi spreads out at the foot of the mountain, 200,000 inhabitants, with its neighbourhoods of little square houses and flat roofs, a network of closely packed cells, as if the city’s geometry was the work of insects.  Or a camp, housing pioneers who have come to extract the wealth from an uninhabitable planet.

Izaguirre/Mountain