Coal on the retina

3 September, 2021

A conversation with Noemí Sabugal and Eduardo Urdangaray.

18:00

With invitation.

Carbón en la retina proposes an open dialogue with the writer and journalist Noemí Sabugal (Santa Lucía de Gordón, León, 1979) and the photojournalist Eduardo Urdangaray (Mieres, 1969). Their connection with mining territories has led them to work on the history of mining from a visual and narrative approach. Noemí Sabugal has written an essay and Eduardo Urdangaray has launched the online Historical Mining Archive.

The conversation will revolve around images selected from the Historical Mining Archive and the photographs that Pablo J. Casal includes in Sabugal’s book.

In her latest essay, Hijos del Carbón (Alfaguara, 2020) (Sons of coal), Noemí Sabugal embarks on a three-year journey through the great mining basins – Asturias, León, Palencia, Teruel, A Coruña, Puertollano or Córdoba- speaking with workers, neighbors, historians, journalists and politicians. From these stories and her memories as a daughter and granddaughter of miners, she tries to reconstruct the history of mining and the end of the coal industry.

The Mining Historical Archive started in 2008 by various press photographers. Currently, the archive has 40,000 documents and images from 15 countries and makes public this huge documentary collection on mining trying to weave a social network. Its ongoing development is participatory. There is a large system of entities and authors-collaborators. All of them make relevant contributions to the fund.

Fotografía: MINEROS Y CARBONERAS. LA ENCARNÁ, SAN MARTÍN DEL REY AURELIO, ASTURIAS. AÑO 1916. (c) Von Aisaider. Source: Archivo Histórico Minero