Opencast Images

In the United Kingdom surface coal mining began in 1942 in response to a national shortage of deep-mined coal. By the 1980s, when Dave Wootton began touring sites and taking photographs, the industry was firmly established with major operations and very large machinery. His fully captioned pictures cover the period from 1986 until British Coal Opencast (BCO) was privatised in 1994. There are panor...