Legacy of the Mine by Ilan Godfrey
Text and images by Ilan Godfrey
"For more than a century, South Africa’s demand for gold, diamonds, coal and platinum has gone from strength to strength, often shifting in accordance with the political economy and the availability of foreign markets. Mineral exploitation by means of cheap and disposable labour has brought about national economic growth, making the mining industry the largest industrial sector in South Africa. Recognised globally for its abundance and variety of mineral resources, which account for a significant proportion of world production and reserves.
These photographs provide agency to those whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed by mining processes and the long-term environmental ramifications, to expose the far-reaching neglect by the successive governments and corporate bodies that have driven the mining industry, to explore how people have coped within their circumstances, and to sensitise a public saturated with the idea of ‘climate change’ by focusing on the local problems that we can actually see. Therefore challenging the ideological portrayal of ‘the mine’ as a symbol of progress, prosperity and wealth. My subjects thus become symbols of the struggle for environmental and social justice in the country.
Even though a project of this nature is far-reaching and covers a large expanse of the South African landscape, it has been tied together through microcosms of visual narration of untold stories. By congregating a disparate network of people and places, I hope to provide a space for them to be heard and for the magnitude of the damage to be felt."
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