Valerian Mazataud, a French photojournalist based in Montreal, is interested in social justice, human rights and international stories. Mazataud has a masters degree in agriculture and marine science, and it’s also worth noting traveled around the world on a bicycle for 16 months covering over 13,000 miles.

With Mazataud’s on-going project he calls “Chaskis” he hopes to explore fair-trade mining and female cooperatives. He recently spent five weeks in the Andes (Peru and Bolivia) with two Canadian journalists exploring mines. “These projects are cooperative self-sustainable projects, including one of the first fair-trade mining projects in the world. The work is hard, but it actually provides work, as 90% of miners in the world work in small artisanal mines,” Mazatoud told PDN via email. “Access was the hardest part, we had to negotiate on the phone and through emails for weeks and in the end, we had to show up at the door before people could really trust us.”