Mining is like a search-and-destroy mission

March 29, 2021 7:53 PM

For What It's Worth - photographer Dillon Marsh takes photographs of South African mines and superimposes computer visualisations of how much of each resource has been extracted.

"Whether they are active or long dormant, mines speak of a combination of sacrifice and gain. Their features are crude, unsightly scars on the landscape - unlikely feats of hard labour and specialised engineering, constructed to extract value from the earth but also exacting a price."

posted by thatwhichfalls (9 comments total)

These are photographs of the ghosts of rocks.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 8:11 PM on March 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

I was quite certain I was headed for computer visualizations superimposed over photographs of South African Mimes.

This is good too though.
posted by ulotrichous at 8:12 PM on March 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

This is a great project, beautifully executed. The diamond set is especially powerful. My dad will love these - he's spent the last 40 years rehabilitating mines in South Africa.
posted by Flashman at 8:34 PM on March 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

Great post, I love it. Thank you.
posted by nevercalm at 10:55 PM on March 29, 2021

These are really nice. (I kept hoping for a human figure or common item (vehicle, whatever) near the spheres for a bit more context, but still nice.)
posted by maxwelton at 10:56 PM on March 29, 2021

Diamonds ain't worth all that.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 3:50 AM on March 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

Oh wow, I'm in the middle of a similar project on oil profits from Louisiana wetlands. But we were using dollars and barrels of oil, so the visualization of the commodity was much bigger. Interesting.
posted by eustatic at 4:08 AM on March 30, 2021 [2 favorites]

I love this idea! But I think it would be more effective if the photos could show the full extent of the respective mines. The Copperton Mine, for example, is MASSIVE, and it would be more powerful to see its ginormous scale in comparison to what would seem an even more trivially small amount of copper, zinc and silver.
posted by bassomatic at 7:14 AM on March 30, 2021 [4 favorites]

Yeah, only the diamond mines really get that sense of scale.
posted by tavella at 10:07 AM on March 30, 2021 [1 favorite]