Under the cover of night, a miner takes a break from his hard work of breaking apart the seams of coal beneath him. He and his partners work throughout the night to avoid police detection and to fill a large order for pickup the next day.
Coal mining in Wałbrzych dates back to the 14th century. During the height of Poland’s hard coal industry in 1979, a record 201 million tons were mined in the Lower Silesia Basin region that runs along Poland’s border with the Czech Republic. But after Poland transitioned from a planned economy to a market economy in the early 1990s, the nation’s coal industry experienced a swift upheaval.
By the early 2000s, a practice that had defined the region for decades in Wałbrzych was effectively shut down. And though coal production was still viable in the landscape surrounding the city, an industry in the region came to a halt, citing inefficiencies and dangerous work conditions.
