Dagbouw bij Tunnel 4. Hier werden de eerste duizend ton kool voor de Marine gewonnen 1921 - 1922

This vintage photograph, "Dagbouw bij Tunnel 4," captures a coal mine landscape, a scene printed in muted sepia tones. What strikes me is how the anonymous photographer rendered the environment; the excavation site is presented with a certain openness. The earth, cut away to reveal its layers, is raw. You can almost feel the texture of the soil. These horizontal strata direct our eye across the frame, they give way to a body of water, its surface still, before rising to a dark tangle of trees which reach for the sky. The photograph gives the viewer a sense of vastness; that the land continues beyond the frame. It reminds me of the photography of Bernd and Hilla Becher, who documented industrial structures with a similar eye for composition and detail. The act of seeing here becomes an act of excavation, of uncovering histories, both visible and unseen.