The dark mattter

Oil and gas have been hot topics in the news in recent decades. Coal has almost vanished from the region of Europe. Most people have the conception that it doesn’t exist any more, but in fact coal is a major part of the world’s energy. Coal is responsible for more than 40% of the energy produced by humans. In a series of 100 portraits, Russian photographer Gleb Kosorukov has photographed the Ukranian miners on their return to the surface from a six-hour shift underground, amid dust, dirt and artificial light. Most of the miner’s agreed to be photographed for the project.
Kosorukov wanted to make coal visible again, considering also the coalmining has hardly changed over the past 100 or 200 years, where an omnipresent fear of death is still surrounding the old Strakhanov’s mine. Miners face extremes in their profession, and hero in part of their life for knowing that some day, they may never come back from the mine. They regarded themselves underpaid, the production as fallen since soviet times, leaving them working with the same soviet equipment nowadays. The choice of the moment and the precision of the light, as Caravaggio would have concentrated on making his concept on the photographs even more clear and disarming. There faces are hiding behind the coal deposited on their skin, the soft light balances these strong images. The series offer from the photographer is a brilliant concept, he brought to light a dark matter of hundred’s year hold to not forget the important and the sacrifice of those brave men.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/video/2010/feb/13/photography-ukrainian-miners

The Guardian
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