Art & exhibitions · Photography
GALAMSEY — Exhibition & Book Launch
Documentary photography exhibition and book launch by Mariusz Śmiejek on illegal gold mining in Ghana, at Gallery I, Belfast.
About it
Ghana 2019-2026 Galamsey is a long-term documentary photography project by Mariusz Śmiejek, documenting the human and environmental cost of illegal gold mining in Ghana. Developed over several years, the project takes the viewer deep into the world of galamsey — the Ghanaian term commonly used for informal and illegal small-scale gold mining. Across mining communities and sites, Śmiejek documents the people whose lives are shaped by the search for gold: miners working underground in dangerous conditions, women and children living alongside mining sites, families dependent on an unstable economy, and landscapes transformed by extraction. Gold is one of the world's most valuable commodities. Yet behind its global value lies a reality that is rarely seen. For many people involved in galamsey, mining is not simply a choice but a means of survival in communities where economic opportunities are extremely limited. At the same time, uncontrolled extraction has devastating consequences for the environment, contaminating water, destroying farmland and permanently altering the landscape. Rather than presenting illegal mining solely as an environmental or political issue, Galamsey focuses on the people caught within this complex system. The photographs explore the tension between poverty and aspiration, survival and exploitation, and the local consequences of a global demand for gold. The exhibition at Belfast Exposed, presented as part of the Belfast International Festival, brings together a selection of photographs from this long-term project. The exhibition will offer an opportunity to encounter the work as an immersive visual narrative, connecting individual stories with the wider systems of extraction, consumption and global inequality. The exhibition will also coincide with the launch of the Galamsey photobook — a limited independent publication bringing together 80 photographs across 156 pages. The book represents the culmination of years of fieldwork, editing and research, and serves as a physical archive of a rapidly changing reality. For Śmiejek, the project is ultimately about looking beyond the gold itself — towards the people, communities and landscapes that carry its hidden cost. Galamsey asks a simple but difficult question: What is the true price of gold?
Ghana 2019-2026 Galamsey is a long-term documentary photography project by Mariusz Śmiejek, documenting the human and environmental cost of illegal gold mining in Ghana. Developed over several years, the project takes the viewer deep into the world of galamsey — the Ghanaian term commonly used for informal and illegal small-scale gold mining. Across mining communities and sites, Śmiejek documents the people whose lives are shaped by the search for gold: miners working underground in dangerous conditions, women and children living alongside mining sites, families dependent on an unstable economy, and landscapes transformed by extraction. Gold is one of the world's most valuable commodities. Yet behind its global value lies a reality that is rarely seen. For many people involved in galamsey, mining is not simply a choice but a means of survival in communities where economic opportunities are extremely limited. At the same time, uncontrolled extraction has devastating consequences for the environment, contaminating water, destroying farmland and permanently altering the landscape. Rather than presenting illegal mining solely as an environmental or political issue, Galamsey focuses on the people caught within this complex system. The photographs explore the tension between poverty and aspiration, survival and exploitation, and the local consequences of a global demand for gold. The exhibition at Belfast Exposed, presented as part of the Belfast International Festival, brings together a selection of photographs from this long-term project. The exhibition will offer an opportunity to encounter the work as an immersive visual narrative, connecting individual stories with the wider systems of extraction, consumption and global inequality. The exhibition will also coincide with the launch of the Galamsey photobook — a limited independent publication bringing together 80 photographs across 156 pages. The book represents the culmination of years of fieldwork, editing and research, and serves as a physical archive of a rapidly changing reality. For Śmiejek, the project is ultimately about looking beyond the gold itself — towards the people, communities and landscapes that carry its hidden cost. Galamsey asks a simple but difficult question: What is the true price of gold?
