Neu-

Since the 1980s, mining company RWE has been tirelessly digging up the soil of the Rhine basin in search of lignite, a low-calorific, high-carbon coal. Its extraction – at a depth of 400 metres – makes it profitable enough to justify, in the eyes of RWE and the German authorities, the destruction of 16 localities.

The multinational company, with annual profits of €4.5 billion, has been expanding continuously since its establishment and has colonised territories to the point where it now covers 287 square kilometres. RWE displaces populations, destroys places of life and worship, exhumes the dead, transforms regions, diverts watercourses, creates new peaks, destroys farms, significantly alters the geology of the soil, decimates forests and, finally, creates viewpoints from which to admire their colossal work.

Neu- (New) is the prefix added to all the names of villages rebuilt a few dozen kilometres from their original location after their destruction. Neu- is also a reference to the world according to RWE, a world where churches are sanitised and country roads give way to motorways. A world where scarred land is contemplated as a fascinating and spectacular landscape.

This photographic work addresses the upheaval suffered by this region beyond the gaping holes left by RWE. By focusing on their surroundings, this book draws mainly on the power of what lies beyond the frame, leaving a constant threat hanging in the air, in an attempt to convey the violence suffered by this region and its inhabitants.

Neu- shows us the intellectual and moral collapse linked to the disorder caused by RWE: the population displacement it generates, the systematic destruction of local history, and the alteration of the landscape, all driven by a disconcerting cynicism.