North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, is home to some of the largest open pit mines on earth. The Hambach and Garzweiler mines, feeding dirty coal power plants, have been expanding and swallowing villages for decades, displacing residents and driving climate change.
Undertaken with Europe Beyond Coal/Beyond Fossil Fuels for several years from 2018, this series focuses on the villages of Manheim, Immerath, and Keyenberg, which will be torn down to make way for coal company RWE’s expanding lignite mines. Churches were made “unholy” before being demolished, and people uprooted from their homes unjustly.