© Paolo Woods & Gabriele Galimberti

© Paolo Woods - The Heavens: Annual Report, 2015

Paolo Woods & Gabriele Galimberti

Paolo Woods was born of Canadian and Dutch parentage. He grew up in Italy, has lived in Paris and in Haiti. He is devoted to long-term projects that blend photography with investigative journalism. He has published five books, including “Chinafrica,” which deals with the spectacular rise of the Chinese in Africa. It has been translated into eleven languages and acclaimed as an exemplary melding of fine art and documentary photography. His work is regularly featured in major international publications. He has had solo exhibitions in more than a dozen countries and his pictures are in private and public collections. He has received a number of prizes, including two World Press Photo Awards.

Gabriele Galimberti was born in Italy and studied photography at Fondazione Studio Marangoni. He ran a professional photography studio and a gallery in Florence before becoming a full-time photographer doing both commercial work and personal documentary projects. He recently completed a 24-month trip around the world, during which he produced a number of extremely well-received bodies of work that have been featured in over 100 international publications. Three of his projects have become books published by Random House and Abrams and are now enjoying great success.

 

The Heavens: Annual Report

 

Tax havens have quietly taken the world by storm. More than half of world trade now passes through these places. They are in the news every day, and are fast becoming a constant fixture of the political debate.

The growing flow of articles and reports on this poorly understood subject are usually illustrated with images of palm-fringed tropical beaches.

Is that what tax havens really look like? From Delaware to Jersey; from Singapore to Panama; from the British Virgin Islands to the City of London, passing through Cayman, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, we take you on a tour into a rarely seen, secretive world that is quite different from what you imagine.

For more than two years we have travelled to the offshore centers that embody tax avoidance, secrecy, offshore banking and extreme wealth, driven by a constant obsession with translating this rather immaterial subject into images. We have produced a body of work that shows what these places look like, but, even more importantly, what they mean.