Haunting Images of Mines from Above

"There is a formal beauty or a 'pleasant order' on one hand, and on the other hand, the images show the transformation or distruction of nature," Lang said of his images.

The aerial photos offer a wide angle of the sites we don't often think about, but may be benefiting from in our daily life. 

Lang chose to photograph a brown coal mine in Germany and a phosphate mine in central Florida. The Tagebau Hambach mine, located in the North Rhine-Westphalia area of Germany, is one of the largest opencast brown coal mining pits in the country. At 52 square miles wide and 1,476 feet deep, it is the biggest hole in Europe, according to Gizmodo.

Germany, which is often praised as a world leader in green energy, gets 25 percent of its energy by burning lignite, also known as brown coal, as opposed to the 23.4 percent of renewable resources used by the country, Discovery.com reported. As Germany has continued to phase out nuclear power, it has started to rely more heavily on energy derived from lignite. Lignite is one of the cheapest and dirtiest fuels available, with the highest carbon emissions per ton when burned, according to a Yale's Environment 360. Brown coal emits one-third more carbon than hard coal and three times as much as natural gas.

Lang explained that Hambach mine is expected to exhaust its lignite reserves by 2040. The mine will then be transformed into an artificial lake.

Lang's Coal Mine Series is now on display at Galerie Liusa Wang in Paris. For more information, visit Lang's website.

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