NERO

 

These photographs were shot in the Sulcis region, South-western Sardinia, between 2003 and 2004: this was the region with the highest concentration of coal mines in Italy. Carbonia, the main town of the area, was built in 1938 by Mussolini. Today only two mines are still working – Seruci and Nuraxi Figus – and at a very limited range of production. Coal mines and coal miners almost entirely disappeared. That industrial world of hard work and botherhood vanished: the incredible strain daily requested was combined with a strong sense of identity, the necessary constant effort to not be defeated by the violence of nature to then come back to light after digging galleries endlessly in the darkness down there.