Dust of life

Over the past four years, I have been documenting the elderly residents of the Yang Jia Hospital in rural Wuyi County in eastern China. These former miners all suffer from the lung disease, pneumoconiosis, which proliferated during the industrial revolution – and is still one of the most common workplace illnesses globally. The Hospital used to be the staff hospital of Dongfeng Fluorite Company, China's largest fluorite producer. It mainly treated miners with pneumoconiosis caused by exposure to dust. According to statistics of two papers by Dongfeng Fluorite Company, more than 850 people with silicosis were found, and from 1964 to 2018, 746 patients died at Yang jia Hospital. Most of the elderly people who are still recuperating in this hospital are pneumoconiosis patients. There are currently more than 30 patients here. Through interviews, a series of portraits, details of the antiquated hospital where these men reside, and scenes depicting the ruins of a vital industrial past, I want to evoke a paradox about life itself.