Dossier Humint

Humint is an Industrial espionage dossier made for a Chinese Company of Tiles about the new tendencies in the International Fair of Tiles in Spain.

 Between 2005 and 2008, I worked as Quality and Engineering Manager in a road signage company. During those years, I experienced how industrial policy works. Last year I traveled to Shanghai, Guanzhou and Zhenzhoug to carry out a series of on-site quality controls of materials that we bought from Chinese companies. One of the issues I had to be aware of in the dealings of these Chinese companies was the falsification of documents, especially in the laboratory test and test reports to comply with European regulations. After returning from China, with one of the businessman, we continue to maintain a working relationship and stayed in contact by mail. Years later, this Chinese businessman wrote me to propose an industrial espionage photograph assignment.

The task was to visit Cevisama, the International Tile Fair of Valencia and photograph the latest trends in tile design, with the intention of manufacturing them in China. I went to the fair disguised as an architect. My mission was to take photographs and notes of the impossible. It was forbidden to take pictures of the stands and every time I tried, all the commercials looked at me with suspicion. I managed to collect 6000 photos. It was then that I grouped with Eloi Gimeno and designed the dossier that we would send to the Chinese businessman. Leticia Tojar and Jorge Alamar were accomplices in the edition of each page of the dossier. The final result was a publication of 500 copies that I titled Dossier Humint, an acronym for Human Intelligence.

 Humint (Human Intelligence) is intelligence gathered by means of interpersonal contact, as opposed to the more technical intelligence gathering disciplines. NATO defines HUMINT as "a category of intelligence derived from information collected and provided by human sources."

Julián Barón. Spain, May 2013.