Katharina Mouratidi

For three years, photographer Katharina Mouratidi used her camera lens to create portraits of people from 43 countries, of persons who challenge of globalization: agricultural laborers and blue-collar workers, students, livestock farmers who raise reindeer, Native Americans, scholars and scientists, Christians, atheists, citizens and revolutionaries. Many of them are world famous personalities, such as Nobel Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú, or Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, and she asked them all the same question: “Why do you do what you do?” Her interviewees each told their own story and explained the very personal motivation behind their actions. The replies Mouratidi received in answer to her question were unusual and differed greatly from one person to the next. Impressive, simple, rebellious, tender, nostalgic, full of ideals and hope, some moving, some warning and some making waves. They have only one thing in common: the certainty that if humankind and our planet are to survive, it is absolutely necessary to change people’s awareness, to appeal to their conscience – turning toward a new kind of globalization, from which all human beings, as well as the environment, stand to benefit.