Yago Soria | Fukú No Unagi
July 2, 2026
A pendulous net hovers just above the surface of the water. Like a mysterious orb descending from above, it glows from within. The light it emits has a hypnotic pull, as if it is gathering something from below, to be beamed back upwards.
What is this strange place? Yago Soria was invited into this scene by his neighbors in the Dominican Republic, and he leads us there as well. On nights when there is little to no moonlight, baby eels migrate through these waters in large volumes, and families gather to fish for them. I am fascinated by Soria’s project Fukú No Unagi. The elements that make his photographs visually captivating equally serve to imbue them with meaning and depth.
An international appetite for sushi has led to the near extinction of certain eel species in parts of Asia. As hunger for unagi increases and supply diminishes, these peculiar and mysterious creatures have suddenly become astronomically valuable. Since they rarely mate in captivity, fishing for eel has become a sort of modern day gold rush in any part of the world where they can be caught.
Soria’s images of fisherman sieving water for eels are unexpectedly similar to depictions of miners panning for precious metals. In one photograph, we see a baby eel that is so small it is reminiscent of a flake of gold on a miner’s hand. The only source of illumination in Soria’s images come from the headlamps worn by the fisherman. And the light in his photographs is completely alive. It is the glitter of gold; it is blinding desire, the visual manifestation of a siren song.
The light serves another purpose- the wash of flash erases details of individuals in the images so that they instead serve as representational figures. Their outlines could be filled by others who are also working to make a living for themselves and their families. Because, at its heart, this project is about something that expands beyond this specific phenomenon. It depicts a blueprint that globalization creates, a structure of industry where the appetites of a global economy consume the resources of local communities.
- Mia Dalglish
See more of Yago Soria’s work Here
