Publisher/れんが書房新社

Google翻訳
"Coal Mines of Old" is a photo collection by Japanese photographer Honda Tatsumi (1929-). Born in Fukuoka, Honda Tatsumi worked at the Kaijima Coal Mine No. 6 in Chikuho, where his father worked. When the mine closed in 1962, he moved to Osaka to find work, but due to the influence of cameras carried by American soldiers and his uncle, who was a photojournalist for the Asahi Shimbun, he picked up a camera in the mid-1950s and began taking photographs in earnest on the side of his work (he studied under Kotaro Tanaka, a member of the Kokugakai), and has held solo exhibitions in various places since the 1990s. This book is a collection of works that capture the towns and coal mines where Honda lived and worked. In addition to many photos from the 1960s, the book concludes with photos of the changes that Honda took when he visited the area in the 1990s. In addition to the daily life of a coal mining town surrounded by slag heaps, the book also captures the scenes of the site that only Honda, a coal miner, could have seen. It also records the struggles of workers to prevent the mines from being forced to close as calls for a shift in energy from coal to oil were made. Some of the photographs are simply records, such as family photographs, but the snapshots are very skillfully composed, making this a book worth looking at, not just for its social theme of coal mining.