Daniel Whibley


This work represents a pilgrimage of geometry, traveling to Ecuador in search of the middle of the Earth, consisting of three photographic images, each with a claim to being the 'mitad del mundo'.

The first is of the monumental statue at the middle of the Earth, built at a point where the equator was thought to pass through the country. A large theme park-like town has been built around this focal point. Studies using GPS later proved that the equator does not run through this site. Tourists still flock to the attraction.

The second photograph depicts the Inti Nan Solar Museum, a site that indigenous people identified as a point through which the equator passes, long before the monument in photograph one was built (approximately 200m away). Unlike the statuesque, false monument, the Inti Nan Solar Museum retains a makeshift appearance, allowing visitors to empirically prove that this is the actual point of the equator by carrying out a number of simple experiments (such as balancing an egg on a nail, or observing water travel either clockwise or counter-clockwise down a plug hole depending on the side of the equator the experiment is carried out on). The globe atop the false monument can be seen in the background of this image.

The third photograph was taken in the depths of the Ecuadorial Amazon basin at a site that a local guide proclaimed to be the point at which the equator passed through this area of the country. I marked this spot with a football.