One oil refinery after another is lined up on the Bay of Augusta, a thirty-kilometer-long coastal strip in southeastern Sicily. The petrochemical industry has put its mark on this landscape, its inhabitants, and their lives for a good seventy years.

Sebastian Wells accompanied the people who live here throughout their daily lives. The water, air, and soil are polluted. Rates of cancer and miscarriages are alarmingly high. Instead of twenty thousand jobs, as there were at the peak of the oil processing industry in the 1980s, there are now only seven thousand. Corruption is as omnipresent as the distrust of authority.

The differences between the wealthy north and the poor south of Italy are especially evident in this place. It is a place where the increasingly weathered artifacts of turbocapitalism blend with the ancient ruins of a more than two-thousand-year-old history.

This work is recently on show at "CONTINENT – In Search of Europe."

An exhibition by OSTKREUZ – Agency of Photographers and Akademie der Künste, 1 October 2020 – 10 January 2021.

Self-Published in 2019, Limited to 500 copys, 64 pages, 44 images, 28cm x 42cm

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For my Utopia project, I already traveled to to the island of Lesvos in 2017 and 2018. It was already a hell at that time. Though, it got always even more worse. In the end of 2019, more than 20.000 refugees lived in and around the camp designed for 3000 without enough access to water and food. I decided to return again in the end of 2019 and once more in September 2020, when a heavy fire destroied the entire camp.

For almost two month I walked around the streets every day to observe the transformation of the public spaces in my hometown Berlin during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In August 2019, Sebastian Wells worked in Hong Kong in order to cover the heavy mass-demonstrations of the countries youth against the extradiction-bill and, more general, for more democracy and independance from mainland China. Being impressed by the endurance of the protesters and their refined use of symbols of civil disobedience, he combined flashed portraits of them with photographs of the battle stages with the police.

With time, many of the provisional lodgings used as temporary homes by refugees evolve into parallel public spaces, each with its own particular rhythm. For his “Utopia” project, Sebastian Wells photographed everyday life in 24 different refugee camps in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He quickly came to realise that they all share certain factors in common. They are fenced, and strictly regulated, with no way out. These camps exist for decades, constantly evolving and expanding but never becoming an official place on a map. Their inhabitants are crisis-trained masters of adaption. The refugee has become a new category of human being, the refugee camp is the political stage on which he has to play his part.

The Olympic Summer Games 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, represent the first part of my long-term-project about Olympic Games. Covering Olympic Games since 2016, I'm looking for images apart oft the daily news visualization of major sports events. His images neither show winners or losers nor pomp and spectacle. Instead, they are facing the mass staging itself.

The sports facilities in Kienbaum, a tiny village east of Berlin, have a long history as cadre factory of the former GDR. The old decompression chamber (color images), only a museum today, testifies that. Today, it is Germanys most important training center for allmost all kind of Olympic and Paralympic Sports. I followed my roots as a former athlete and tried to find out, what it means to be an athlete for Germany today. This project is part of the Series "Germany in the year 2019" by Paul Ouazan and can be seen on the plattform of Arte Info.

The night of 31st January 2020 manifested one of the biggest and most feared crisis of the European Union: The Brexit. On the Parliament Square, hundreds of Britains assembled to celebrate the end of a marathon of negotiations full of hate, ideologies and distrust - for the moment.

The Olympic Winter Games 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea, represent the second part of my long-term-project about Olympic Games. Covering Olympic Games since 2016, Sebastian Wells is looking for images apart oft the daily news visualization of major sports events. His images neither show winners or losers nor pomp and spectacle. Instead, they are facing the mass staging itself.

Europe's largest border shop is moored at Fehmarn's Waterkant in Puttgarden, and millions of Scandinavians invade every year to buy crates of beer and schnapps. Is this the saddest place in the world? Or paradise on earth? A reportage for JWD Magazine.

Text: Moritz Herrmann
Photo Editor: Alexandru Pasca

Commissioned by the football magazine 11Freunde, Sebastian Wells traveled during the soccer world cup through Russia for over a month. Instead of covering the games only, he turned his eye on locals and fans.

Photo Editor: Jens Kuiper

The Kolkata Derby, also known as "Boro Match", is the eternal duel of natives and migrants, rich and poor. The football match between Mohun Bagan and East Bengal FC has a long history of myths and crowds, of winners and loosers. It catalyses the rivalry between the two main ethnic groups in Kolkata, Ghotis and Bengals. For 11Freunde magazine, I accompanied a group of young East Bengal Ultras for a week prior to and during the big derby.

Text: Andreas Bock
Photo Editor: Jens Kuiper

During the state elections in Brandenburg, I accompanied Ingo Senftleben, frontrunner of the CDU and a former bricklayer, for DIE ZEIT on his campaign tour.

Text: Anne Hähnig
Photo Editor: Amélie Schneider

Every year in May, King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Center (short KASOTC), which is located in the northeast of Jordans capital Amman, hosts a competition for Special Operation Forces and Law Enforcement Unites of Jordanian and international Teams. Funded mainly by sponsors like army manufacturers, the "Annual Warrior Competition" operates as a great advertising effort for the business of KASOTC that opened in 2009 as a result of the US-Jordanian military aid. Teams from all over the world compete in different diciplines such as "House of Terror" or "The King's Challenge" while trying to cross certain obstacles, running as fast as possible and, most important, fire on targets. The winners of this commercialized counterterrorism event celebrate hilariously while humility towards the dark reality of war and death seems to be completely lost.

England during the allegedly final Brexit negotiations.

Utopia Book
Self-Published in 2018, Limited to 100 copys, Signed, 128 pages, 63 images, 20,5cm x 30,5cm

SOLD OUT

For bfstudio-architekten, I realised a documentation of the Metropolenhaus in Berlin-Kreuzberg. On the ground floor, cross-financed by the apartment owners, it offers a place called "feldfünf" where the exchange between people and cultures can develop and unfold.

Wigan became famous not least because of George Orwells social report "Road to Wigan Pier", in which he tries to investingate why the working class people around the northern english coal mines do not trail socialist ideas. Eight decades after its publication, Orwells work gets alarmingly current as the town stood out with by far the most "Leave" votes within the metropolitan area of "Greater Manchester" in the Brexit referendum, with almost 64% of people voting to leave the EU. What has remained of the working class mentality in these days, where the old coal mines are replaced by golf resorts and modern business parks? A visit.