Description

Coal dust, when breathed in, builds up in the soft tissues of the lungs, causing irreversible damage. In the Gwendraeth Fawr Valley where I live, there was a very high incidence amongst miners of disability and death from the dust, or Black Lung.

I am interested in what we select to represent, as compared with what is omitted. And in our inseparable connectedness with both our immediate surroundings, and what may feel distant from us in time or place.

This collaged print includes parts of a diagram of a coal mine from a 1975 illustrated dictionary. The original diagram contains detailed information about mining techniques and equipment, but miners’ bodies, and the hazards to which those bodies were exposed, were omitted from it. Yet the bodies of miners, together with the dangers, were at the foundation and heart of the coal industry