Children's playground, Bobov Dol, Bulgaria, 2019 © Dan Wilton
Dan Wilton: I'd been looking for a charity to work with and met ClientEarth in 2018. We actually discussed loads of the issues they work on, but when they described how in Germany, still roughly a third of its energy comes from coal – while it's seen as this green leader in Europe – that really piqued my interest. The aim was always to tell two stories: the human scale of it, and the story of local people who live and work next to them, who rely on it for income and in a way their sense of identity, like in Poland where there's a real pride to coal mining and everyone gets dressed up for Barbórka [the feast day of St. Barbara, the patron saint of miners].
The last residents of Anargyroi, Northern Greece, a coal plant town standing outside
We agreed to start in early 2019, then my second daughter was going to be born in August 2019, so I raced to do it before she was born, and failed. During COVID I could feel the work aging and was almost scared it would lose meaning, but actually it just changed meaning. Do you think you’ll return to it?
Poland is the big missing piece, really. Germany's coal phase out date is currently 2038, Poland doesn't even have one. Unfortunately, because of the situation in Ukraine, Germany, and Italy have already hinted they might slow their phase out plan, because they want to reduce dependence on Russian natural gas. It's definitely front and centre because of the situation [with Russia]; I've never heard people talking about the energy mix of Europe before, but you walk down the street and people are talking about it now.
Ende Gelände protester, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, 2019 © Dan Wilton
Some would view me as a threat – in Bulgaria we got set up by an old lady on the first day – but some places, like Germany, were very accommodating. At the same time, the Ende Gelände protesters [who occupy mines in Germany] didn’t want me to photograph them because the German police use any photograph online to identify them. There was a real sense of solidarity [shooting the protestors] though, so there's a whole range of emotions.
It’s a mixture really. In Bulgaria there'll be a lot of people who don’t want the mine to close, because there's nothing else. In a lot of the Greek villages, like this guy George I shot, they’re very conflicted – his whole village is almost encircled by the mine and it has been leaching these heavy metals into their natural water supply. But his job is working in the mine, and he’s completely isolated by the mine surrounding it. As a village they were trying to sue the mine, which they rely on for income, so they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. Obviously, the environmental impact of coal is quite alarming. Was there any reassuring element to the project?
The Portuguese picture – where they’re playing football on the beach – that something could change so drastically in two years gave me hope. It was one of the top 30 worst plants in Europe, people were swimming in the water that comes out of the plant into the sea. But now it's completely shut down, ten years ahead of schedule. When they were trying to bring in a coal phase out plan, there were huge strikes; now the whole sentiment of the country has changed.
Towerfest Country Music Festival, Drax power station, North Yorkshire, 2019 © Dan Wilton
‘Yiorgos’, Coal Miner, Akrini, Northern Greece, 2019 © Dan Wilton
Tourists, RWE’s Hambach Mine, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, 2019 © Dan Wilton
The Residents of Anargyroi, Northern Greece, 2019 © Dan Wilton
‘Jan’, Babórka, Katowice, Poland, 2019 © Dan Wilton
Aboño Power Plant, Gijón, Spain, 2019 © Dan Wilton.jpg
