Over the past few years, running Meta Mate Bar in Berlin, we were taken aback how often we encountered young, urban Mate drinkers who were puzzled to see us sipping a green smokey substance that looked like a hookah. Mate, for them, was a fizzy bottled drink that 'wired' them. Some tried a sip from a real mate, others returned with friends to experience a mate ceremony, and bought a cuia and bomba to take home.
When we opened the doors of Meta Mate in 2011, we never expected that it would become a fusion between a traditional indigenous and new digital culture, we didn't realize that there was a new generation of mate drinkers who were as passionate about their mates as the gaucho's in the Pampas.
MateLeaks is an introduction to a culture that is transforming with globalization and industrialization, told through images that are fading away in the digital era.
The original black and white images were shot with a medium-format camera, enlarged in a darkroom and then hand-colored with pastels. The technique used to create the photos is mirrored in the subject it captures – futile, perhaps in the eyes of some – digital cameras and computers can do the same without the 'mess' just as a bottle of Mate is much easier to open than a cuia is to mount. However, even when the same end results are achieved (be it a photo or state of mind from drinking mate), the process to get there makes a difference.
Mate Leaks is not meant to be a one-stop English encyclopedia of Mate, rather it flashes back to the traditional methods of harvesting mate and through the QR Code and link at the end readers can fast-forward to modern up-dated issues and urban mate drinking.
We hope you enjoy your MateLeaks and are glad to answer all questions you have with regards to Mate.
