Industry and Photography

Photography and industry both revolve around reproduction, Harun Farocki states at the outset of the film. He goes on to deconstruct this statement through a series of photographs of coal mines, mostly taken in the first half of the 20th century. Rather than showing a perfect symbiosis between industry and photography, these images are chaotic and fragmented. They are poorer, according to the commentary, and thus have more to say. The photographs show how the rise of machines increasingly pushes humans into a supporting role, and how this in turn leads to images in which those same workers are depicted romantically, nostalgically.

Even more than reproduction, the film is about representation. About the headframe above ground as a representation of the “invisible” mine tunnels, the face as a representation of the whole human being. How deceptive that relationship is between part and whole, between photograph and reality. Can you reconstruct the mining process through these photographs? Or are you instead reconstructing the construction of an image?