Iuliia Gataulina. From the photographic project ‘Unearthing the Earth’
Unearthing
the Earth
Photo project, 2024–ongoing
Location: Outokumpu and Sodänkylä; Finland
This photo series depicts various sites of metal extraction and processing, both past and present
It was produced in Finland during fieldwork for a research project on extractivism, and specifically features extraction sites in Outokumpu (a former copper mining area) and Sodankylä (an active multi-metal mining site). The series focuses on mining machinery and infrastructure, as well as sites of environmental contamination resulting from mining activities. These techno-physical entanglements between mining infrastructures and the bedrock are approached through the concept of unearthing: large-scale material intervention into the Earth’s subsurface under extractivist regimes.
This photo project ultimately attends to how toxicity emerges from an assemblage of forces – political, industrial, and biochemical. The photographs depict the agents behind the creation of toxic ecologies in Outokumpu, Finland: the corrosive, agentic forces of sulfuric acid as the primary chemical species driving these ecologies, as well as the mining infrastructures that enabled the creation of sulfuric acid in its abundance in the first place.