Mines of Sicily

“He would say that he had always been there, since childhood, and had always seen that black hole plunging underground, where his father used to lead him by the hand. Then he would stretch out his arms to the right and left and describe how the tangled labyrinth of tunnels ran everywhere beneath their feet, this way and that...”

Giovanni Verga, Rosso Malpelo

This work is dedicated to the world of mining and to the generations of workers who, through their sweat and blood, scraped crumbs of survival for themselves and riches for others from the dark belly of the earth.

In the late 1990s, Ferreri photographed the sulphur and potash mines of central Sicily: Floristella and Pasquasia, Bosco, Ciavolotta, Cozzo Disi, Gibellini, Trabia Tallarita and Trabonella.

All that remains of that world are the skeletons of industrial archaeology, mummified by the accretions of time: the calcarone kilns, the blind tunnels, the winding towers, the rusted sheet metal, the shafts disappearing into darkness.

A frontal inventory, without grand gestures, of a landscape of labour that has already passed into history.