Coal Seam, Bergwerk Prosper-Haniel #1

Miles Coolidge

2013 · Inkjet print · Photographs

Coolidge made this photograph inside the Prosper-Haniel coalmine in the Ruhr Valley, which is in the same region that Bernd and Hilla Becher—once Coolidge’s professors at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie—documented the dilapidated industrial architecture that brought this coal to the surface. The trompe l’oeil effect in this work is astonishing and conceptually apposite: not coincidentally, the pigments used in inkjet prints such as this one are almost entirely derived from coal.

Artist

Miles Coolidge

Date

2013

Medium

Inkjet print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2014