Iuliia Gataulina. From the photographic project ‘A body of copper’
A body of copper
Photo project, 2025
Location: Outokumpu, Finland
The photo project A body of copper follows a human body moving through the infrastructures of an old copper mining plant – from underground tunnels to the ore-crushing facility, and finally to the nearby waste area. This trajectory mirrors the journey that copper ore takes as it is transformed from bedrock into a metallic commodity.
BLASTEDEXPOSEDDRILLEDTRANSPORTED
Reflected through the human body, this journey draws attention to the corporeality of mining labour: workers whose bodies function as instruments of extraction, often under dangerous conditions, including low temperatures, limited oxygen and light, and unstable tunnel structures. The photographs aesthetically bind the human body to the materiality of copper ore, revealing their entanglement within the violent processes of large-scale industrial mining.
ELEVATEDCRUSHEDDUMPEDPENETRATED
The project was developed during the Old Mine Residency in Outokumpu and is part of the academic project “Pluriversal Waters”, funded by the Kone Foundation.