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Steph Glaros: I’m speaking with Jason Roth, who is a multimedia journalist and photographer for Utne Reader’s May/June cover story, “The Mountain That Eats Men,” which chronicles a reporter’s journey into La Negra mine in Potosí, Bolivia.

First, I just want to say that everyone was just adamant about finding a place for this story—in no small part because of the images that went with Andrew Westoll’s wonderful writing.

Jason Rothe: That’s great.

Steph: How did you become involved in the project in the first place?

Jason: I became involved in it through Andrew who I worked with on a number of projects. Both of us had found out about Potosí by reading Eduardo Galeano’s book, Open Veins of Latin America. I did some research and we concluded this was an incredible place that we had to visit and do a story on.

Steph: The piece was originally published in the Walrus. Did you approach them first or pitch the story when it was done?

Jason: Andrew had worked with The Walrus in the past. I think they were kind of supporting us while we were down there. We weren’t on assignment for them per se, but they had already expressed interest at that point. But it was mostly on spec.

Steph: I tried to imagine myself juggling even the most basic photo equipment while trying to navigate that mine. What did you bring down there with you?

Jason: I had a couple of camera bodies: the 5D, that I usually shoot with; the Canon; and a back-up camera as well. A few lenses, some fast prime lenses, because of the low-light conditions, and a flash.

Steph: I have to imagine it was hard to move all that stuff around down there?

Jason: I had my camera around my neck because I wanted to be able to get some photos as quickly as possible when things were happening: mine cars going past, people working in little pockets inside the mountain. So it did bang against the rocks a fair bit. It was dusty, and we were also wading in rubber boots through several inches of water that’s on the bottom of the mine.

The toughest thing happened the day before when we arrived in Potosi. I was sleeping on the bus and my back cramped up. I’m fairly tall and the mines are quite low in a lot of places, probably 4 or 5 feet, so you really have to crouch and in some places actually crawl to make it through. The entrance to La Negra was particularly difficult for me because it’s low, and you have to essentially almost run, because you have to hit a window when there are no mine cars coming.

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