Black Diamond – Sebastian Sardi

Our friend and colleague Sebastian Sardi is currently crowdfunding for his latest documentary series. There is two weeks left to back the campaign, and support the production of this beautiful work. BLACK DIAMOND is a long term photography project, and the images will be published in a high quality hard cover photo book in collaboration with the renowned German Publisher Kehrer Verlag. The work is a mixture of 120 film and 80MP and 100MP Phase One digital medium format.

“It is a lunar landscape, apocalyptic. There are huge man-made holes in the landscape, the ground is burning. Large glowing pits open up the gates to the underworld. The whole area is oozing of toxic gases and toxic smoke. Sometimes the land is divided and split open. Villages are sinking down into the ground. Young children are digging in the soil with their bare hands. It is all about Coal – or “BLACK DIAMOND” as it is also called by the locals.”

BLACK DIAMOND is about the environmental aspects of fossil fuel usage and it is also a close portrait of the people who work with extracting it from the ground. The photographs show the coal mining and the everyday lives of coal workers and miners in India. What I have seen and photographed at all the mines that I visited in India are hard-working men, women and children and their living and working conditions. As well as the nature and landscape.

There is a fragile balance between nature and mankind. The human inability to break patterns is painstakingly visible in these photographs, as we knowingly keep on extracting the ground beneath our own feet. Energy produced by the burning of coal is the single biggest contributor to the carbon dioxide emissions generated by human kind. Coal is a major part in the issue of global warming.

BLACK DIAMOND will be a high quality hardcover photo book with printed cover and 112 pages containing 42 photographs including 5 double fold-out pages (left and right). The book will go to print as soon as the Kickstarter ends. It will be published and designed by German Kehrer Verlag.

• Book Size: 240x275mm
• Hardcover Book with Printed Cover
• 112 pages incl 5 Double Fold-out Pages
• Content is 170gsm Art Print Semi-Matte Paper
• There will be both Color and Black & White photographs

If the campaign is successful, we will hope to have copies of the book available through Teamwork. There is two weeks left to support so head over to the Kickstarter page to back!