Matthew Shutzer

This is an image of the inside of a “thermal precipitator,” a device used to separate and measure airborne particles in various mining industries. The senior scientist pictured here is interested in this device as part of a national study on pneumoconiosis, or “black lung,” an occupational disease caused by long-term exposure to coal dust that generates pulmonary fibrosis in the lungs – inflammation and scarring of the lung tissue that prevents the body from obtaining necessary oxygen. This image is contained in an album from the International Labour Organization to showcase their use of United Nations funding for both mechanizing Indian coal mines and establishing a “Mines Health Unit,” a body that engaged in physiological experimentations on hundreds of miners’ pulmonary capacities, as well as environmental studies of air quality in deep mine shafts. The ILO mission had a paradoxical effect. While committed to providing support for workers in the name of improved occupational health facilities, funds for mining mechanization began a decades-long process of diminishing the number of workers employed by the collieries. Much of the work of the Mines Health Unit would be forgotten by the 1970s as the Indian coal sector transitioned towards open-cast extraction – a mining method more dependent on capital investments in earth-moving machinery than Indian miners.

As an image, I am interested in this photograph for what it tells us about the aesthetic and technological conditions of “looking underground.” Photography has a long history of connection to subterranean spaces and substances. The image of the thermal precipitator adds to an understanding of subterranean space beyond its immediate association with what’s underneath: the underground is in the air, it’s in our bodies. Moreover, glimpsing the underground requires various types of technological mediation beyond the camera. The image is also striking because of its resonances with what Srirupa Roy describes as the “performative” expressions of post-colonial Indian technoscience

Questions

1. Absent this context, how would you describe this image in a formal sense? What types of moods or questions does the image provoke? How is depth specifically used here?

2. How is the figure of the man portrayed? What do you know about him based on the image alone?