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The Coast Exposed
Mar. 24th, 2005 09:54 amThis morning's Guardian carried a double page spread of photos from this new exhibition at the Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Another thing to pencil in for the next visit to London...
The Guardian piece included a photo from Horden, on the Durham coast; which reminded me I had meant to return to this.
Post-industrial Durham is cleaning up its act, and speaks of the "black beaches" in the past tense; for example an article in The Countryman talks of "dirty, black waste" and "environmental pollution on a truly mind-blowing scale". It's hard to argue with that: the Durham coalfield extends out under the North Sea, and as the inland pits closed, the industry clung on to the coast, tipping its waste out at sea for the tide to return.
But nothing about Durham's relationship with its industrial past is simple. It isn't necessary to be sentimental or nostalgic about an industry which scarred the countryside and killed its workers to say that nonetheless, the black beaches were special. Photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's Coal Coast exhibition conveys something of this, and her notes speak eloquently of "The glistening black sands of fools' gold, purple rocks of burnt shale, pebbles glowing with iron sulphate". But her photographs are a record of a vanishing era, and already show the effects of the clean-up. They show rusting iron and crumbling concrete, but very few of them show the sheer blackness of the coal beaches.
I remember a Christmas Day, years ago, when we sat on a cliff near Easington to eat our ham sandwiches, and gazed down at the black breakers foaming on the black sands; for all the human arrogance that had created the scene, it was magnificent. The aesthetic that leads to the cultivation of black plants and the excitement over a black hyacinth must allow a small regret for the vanishing of the black beaches.
The Guardian piece included a photo from Horden, on the Durham coast; which reminded me I had meant to return to this.
Post-industrial Durham is cleaning up its act, and speaks of the "black beaches" in the past tense; for example an article in The Countryman talks of "dirty, black waste" and "environmental pollution on a truly mind-blowing scale". It's hard to argue with that: the Durham coalfield extends out under the North Sea, and as the inland pits closed, the industry clung on to the coast, tipping its waste out at sea for the tide to return.
But nothing about Durham's relationship with its industrial past is simple. It isn't necessary to be sentimental or nostalgic about an industry which scarred the countryside and killed its workers to say that nonetheless, the black beaches were special. Photographer Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's Coal Coast exhibition conveys something of this, and her notes speak eloquently of "The glistening black sands of fools' gold, purple rocks of burnt shale, pebbles glowing with iron sulphate". But her photographs are a record of a vanishing era, and already show the effects of the clean-up. They show rusting iron and crumbling concrete, but very few of them show the sheer blackness of the coal beaches.
I remember a Christmas Day, years ago, when we sat on a cliff near Easington to eat our ham sandwiches, and gazed down at the black breakers foaming on the black sands; for all the human arrogance that had created the scene, it was magnificent. The aesthetic that leads to the cultivation of black plants and the excitement over a black hyacinth must allow a small regret for the vanishing of the black beaches.
