In the bay of Augusta, a vast coastal area of eastern Sicily, for over 70 years is operating the Syracuse Petrochemical Cluster, whose factories for refining, the processing of crude oil chemicals and energy production is one of the largest and most polluting petrochemical complexes in Europe.

In this photographic project, carried out between 2019 and 2020, Sebastian Wells accompanied the inhabitants of Augusta in their daily life marked by pollution, unemployment, poverty, corruption. The discrepancy between the richer and more developed north and the south is particularly evident in this part of Italy. In Augusta, in particular, there developed a complicated social tension between capitalism and Catholicism, infiltrations of the mafia and distrust of institutions, between environmental activism and resigned apathy.

Sebastian Wells uses photographic narration to investigate the anthropological core of the post-industrial society of Augsburg, in the belief that the relationship between environment and industry transcends mere political, technical and economic issues. Augusta could be anywhere.

Sebastian Wells is an obsessed young photographer, driven by the contemporaneity of current business and thoughts on how to view it. After starting as a sports photographer at the age of 15, he now works for publishing and commercial clients and for his personal projects almost everywhere. Sebastian, born in 1996, is a Berlin-based photographer who graduated from the Ostkreuzschule for photography in 2018 and has been a member of the OSTKREUZ Photographer’s Agency since 2019.