HADES? This series of photographs was taken from March through August 2009. It was my intention to pay homage to people performing hard manual labor, the workers who once were very proud of their positions and are now loosing their jobs. Changes in global economy and recession speeds up the process ...

In 2008, as the price of gold began skyrocketing on global markets, a cluster of several villages in rural Zamfara, northwest Nigeria, turned into the center of a new, dangerous and uncontrollable gold rush. The artisanal mines of Zamfara were soon visited by foreign gold traders and swamped by...

The Alberta Tar Sands, the world's most environmentally damaging and toxic project, represent the world's second largest oil reserves, and are America's single largest source of oil. Since September 11th 2001, the resulting high cost and demand of oil, and the desire for "security"...

In eastern Java (Indonesia) poverty, exploitation, corruption and modern forms of slavery emerge from Mount Ijen, the same way the sulfur spills out around here, uncontrolled. Miners must carry loads, which range from 75kg to 90kg for five kilometers. They get for each kilogram of hardened yellow sulfur 900 rupees (9 cents of a US dollar) ...

Every year many industrial accidents occur in Turkey and nearly 1200 workers died last year. A portion of these deaths are in the coal mines. My project is about coal mine workers who have major risks of deadly accidents. In May 2014, the nation's worst mining accident occurred in Soma, Turkey....

In Jharia, in the federal state of Jharkhand, approximately 600,000 people live in the middle of one of India's biggest coal mining areas. There is nothing in it for most of them. Quite the opposite: the soil, the water and the air are now contaminated, of all things in an area that was previously ...

Westernport is a town few people have ever heard of. It is both a real place and for me, growing up in urban Baltimore, a mythologized place of reverie from my childhood. It is the birthplace of my grandmother and as a young girl I heard endless stories about the mountains, the town, the mines and how our family survived. 

Mining is in the blood of Bolivia. It is one of the country's oldest occupations and one of the only jobs available in some areas. It is also the country's greatest source of water pollution. During the last two years I have documented this toxic relationship, photographing the lives ...

The "copper belt" situated in the Southeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo, holds 34% of the world reserves of cobalt and 10% of the world copper reserves. In early 2011, copper prices reached its historic record: $10,000 US per ton on the London Metal Exchange. Since then, the trend...

The Spanish arrived in El Choc�, in the Colombian Pacific, successfully searching for gold. African slaves they brought to work the mines were the ancestors of today's Afro-Colombian population. Commercial mining ended in the 1960s, but recently high prices for gold and limited proven ...

The "Kawah Ijen" is a stratovolcano in East Java. In its crater is a lake and the crater itself is used as an open-pit mine. Every day (or rather, every night, well before sunrise) dozens of miners climb to the top of the Ijen, descend into the crater, collect 60, 70, sometimes even 80 kilos (130, 150, 170 pounds) of sulfur rocks...

Quarries are open pit mines used to extract building materials. It is an expanding business with huge economic profits. As labor costs and land values are quite cheap, here new pits are being excavated in a great number. The livelihood of the people working there is miserable. Their wage is ...

Bolivia Mineworkers is an ongoing project that explores the lives and work conditions of the men, women and children. My aim is to give voice to the voiceless and to address the continual colonial labor practices and laws in regards to the dangerous work where the benefits of employment are ...

These photographs are made in the Lignite Mine Kolubara, in west Serbia that I worked in for more than 20 years. Technology is old and it's difficult to work. Rain, wind, heat, winter, dust, noise ... day by day, night by night, is constantly our operating environment. Nevertheless, miners from Kolubara...