the world's most metal job

[asakiyume]

. . . has surely got to be working in the sulfur mines in the crater of Kawah Ijen, a volcano in East Java, Indonesia. Stop and think a moment. Sulfur mining. In a volcano.

It's a world of fire, acid, and poisonous gases.

(There is an acid lake in the crater.)

Molten sulfur is blood red, but it burns with a blue flame. The photographer Olivier Grunewald took these photos, which ran in the Boston Globe on 8 December 2010. (Source for the entire photo essay here.) (Hat tip to yamamanama for showing me these!)

sulfur flames

image © Olivier Grunewald


image © Olivier Grunewald

molten sulfur

image © Olivier Grunewald


The Boston Globe had another photo essay on the mine on 1 June 2009, focused more on the hard-labor aspects. Workers pry the raw mineral sulfur out by hand and carry it down the mountain in heavy-laden baskets, on their backs ...


photo by Ulet Ifansati


photo by Ulet Ifansati

In conclusion. If you want to do a Cracked list about working in actual hellish circumstances, don't leave out the sulfur mine of Kawah Ijen.

Comments

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Good lord. If someone put this in a novel, ("and then our hero was sentenced to hard labor in the sulfur mines for a crime he did not commit!") I'm sure readers would think it sounded over the top. Sulfur mining? In a volcano? Among blood-red sulfur that burns blue? Truly the most metal job.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about this, about how when it comes to romantic tales (not in the sense of love-romance, but in the sense of tales-of-valor romance), it must have high drama, but not so much that it becomes caricature--and yet in reality, when you have the actual thing itself, it's never at any risk of seeming like a caricature. I ask myself why, and it's because--I think--of the matter-of-factness of the people living it. I was saying to browngirl: there's huge drama in the story of the people working there, but it's not the drama of a romance. Or maybe in some cases it is! But the way it would unfold would be different from the type of romance in which the sulfur mines were a "mere" hard-labor sentence.

… Not sure if that made any sense, though. I don't mean to dis romances, which I *love*, and I'm not trying to say (not upon reflection, anyway), that one couldn't write a romance with this in it and have it work, just that the *reality* of the place makes certain demands. yeah. I think that's what I'm trying to say...

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Wow. I was about to put this in my Story Notes file but then I realized osprey_archer is right: it would break the reader's suspension of disbelief!

I feel for people who must descend into that every day just to earn a living. I hope they're as safe and well as possible.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I feel the same way about the people who work there.

I think you could put it in a story and have it be believable--but it would be a different kind of story: one focused on those workers . . .

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

While researching my volcanic crater mine* for WW, I came across that Boston Globe essay (and its gorgeous but haunting) photos of the work in that sulphur mine. It is amazing that people work in such conditions in our day and age.

I haven't seen those blue flame images before. Beautiful!

_____________
* but sulphur mining is not what is happening in my story. And looking at my "ph" spelling. I seem to gravitate towards more US-external spellings like travelling and grey, and this dates back to early grade school when my teacher refused to let me put a U in color. :P I maintained that it was a valid spelling, but she was having none of it and insisted I should know at age 7-8, in pre-Internet days, that there was a difference between American and British spelling and should not be influenced by things I saw printed in a book when SHE had taught the class otherwise. And look my tangent! :P

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

What an amazing pedant of a teacher! I remember noticing the distinctions between British and American spelling too, and thinking the British was fancier because: extra letters. I always trip up on "sulphur/sulfur" myself. I figure, so long as I'm consistent in any one document/post/whatever, that's good enough!

[dudeshoes.livejournal.com]

Wow. Just wow.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Mind = Blown

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Definitely an awful job! And, once again, beautiful, but deadly.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It's a powerful combination, that beautiful-but-deadly!

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

That third shot is beautiful and I love the men with sulphur wings about to take flight. :o)

My grandads were colliers and I know how appalling a job that was, so I can only imagine.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

In another photo in the second set of photos, a portrait shot of one of the miners, his eyelashes were flecked with sulfur.

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

Holy !!!!! How beautiful it is, but how horrible that people have to work in that deadly place.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

You said it! Looking in on such a place, sure. Having to work there--yikes.

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

In the movie, Girl Rising, one of the girls highlighted was from Peru. Her family lived and worked the mines and their environs. I cannot imagine such living conditions to exist! And yet they do.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Reality just continually boggles the mind.

[sovay]

Stop and think a moment. Sulfur mining. In a volcano.

That cannot be good for a person.

You wonder why so many of the most beautiful things are things that will kill you.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes, why is that? I don't think it's a because thing. But maybe? Or beauty is equal opportunity in where it can be found.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine actually climbed an Indonesian volcano where this took place (I'm not sure whether there's more than one) and met some of the miners. Just think how that would look at a job placement interview. "So, what other skills and experience do you have?" "Well, I can climb an active volcano and bring back sulfur from its crater..."

It's also worth stopping to think what happens to that sulfur afterwards, won from the mouth of a volcano. It could well be in the food you eat, or the tires of the car you drive...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes, in the nighttime photo shoot (the one from which the blue-flame pictures come), it mentions that the sulfur is used for vulcanizing rubber and bleaching sugar. Yum yum! And I know I've seen both molasses and apricots marketed as "unsulfured"--which I guess means that other brands or types of molasses and apricots are, somehow, subjected to sulfur.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Wow--those photos are jaw dropping!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The photographer apparently lost one camera and a couple of lenses to the conditions!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

That does not surprise me at all. I am just glad that he did not lose his life!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Ditto--and then you start thinking about everyone who works there daily….

[gwynnega]

Wow.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Eye-poppingly.

[rustica.livejournal.com]

Sulphur mining took place on a volcanic island off NZ until 1914, when the volcano went pop and everyone (except the camp cat) died https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whakaari_/_White_Island . I want to visit sometime, but they had to stop the tourist tours last year when the island became a bit frisky and I don't know if it's reopened yet. I'm told it's an absolutely amazing sight.

Those are amazing, amazing photos!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I guess sulfur and volcanoes frequently go together. That's terrible about the miners at Whakaari! Having nine lives no doubt benefited that cat.

One day I hope to get to Indonesia, or if not there, some other volcano-rich area, and visit some volcanoes.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

I saw a few scenes of miners in, I presume, this mine in Samsarra. I am pretty sure, since the miner in the picture you provided is using the exact kind of basket they used in the film. I remember one of them had blistered shoulders from his basket.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in the second photo shoot, one of the photos was of exactly that: the raw shoulders of one of the workers (this one (http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/kawa_06_01/k18_19137657.jpg)). Now you've made me curious about the movie Samsarra

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

We were able to catch it at the tiny theater at Trinity recently. It will probably lose a lot on the small screen.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I just checked it out on Wikipedia, and yup, it was that mine!

The movie sounds awesome--really wonderful.

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

That truly is amazing.
Sulphur isn't a metal, though.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

True: it's a nonmetal mineral, like coal. (I didn't say it was a metal--I said the workers were carrying out mineral sulfur)

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

The job is still metal, even if they don't work with any metals.