AD5803 - Seacoal, Chris Killip

During my researches on practitioners who made project on unsustainable topics, I came into the amazing series by Chris Killip: Seacoal.

The subjects of this book is a small community located on the Northeastern coast of the United Kingdom, who were making their living collecting and selling the coal found on a shore line.

It took quite a long time to get the trust of the men working on the beach (they kept on attacking him during his first visits), but after he has been recognised from one of the leaders, who met before during a horse fair, he has been introduced to the other families and he eventually built a strong relationship with them.

I find this project incredibly interesting because is the perfect example of how there is no a clear line between sustainable and unsustainable. We can consider the activity of these people as unsustainable, but then we can look at their strong sense of community among their members and define it as a sustainable community in its social sense.

Looking at the pictures in the book, what emerges most, in my opinion, is really the sense of community. These people working hard together supporting each other. Children, in particular, play a key role in the narrative, because you can clearly see how strong is their relationship with all the other members and they contribute in all the activities, from the collection of the coal to looking after the horses.