Daniel Chatard's documentary photos on coal mining in Germany

Between stony fronts. Since 2017, Daniel Chatard has been photographing the conflict surrounding coal mining in North Rhine-Westphalia in his work “No Man’s Land”.

11.08.2022 Text: Finn Winkler Fotos: Daniel Chatard

Daniel is stunned when his friend tells him the story of threatened villages to be forcibly relocated for lignite mining in Germany. Curious, he decides to travel to the Rhineland and investigate further. There, he meets activists who live in tree houses as part of their campaign against the logging of Hambach Forest.

Contact with them is difficult at first. The activists are suspicious of the media and only want to be photographed hooded. But Daniel doesn’t let up: He keeps driving to the Rhineland, spending the night in the forest. He even helps build tree houses. He soon succeeds in winning the trust of the activists. They also show him how to climb into the tree houses: You secure yourself to two loops. Like a caterpillar, you then pull yourself up, piece by piece.

Meanwhile, Daniel is also working on a book dummy. For this purpose, he is on the road again in the Rhineland to have affected people from the villages write down their thoughts. For him, this creates an exciting dialogue: The meaning of his images is renegotiated. These thoughts and quotes will be published at the end with his photographs.

Daniel Chatard now lives in the Netherlands. His work has been published in ZEIT, National Geographic, and the Washington Post, among others. The exchange during his studies meant a lot to him, as did the solidarity of his fellow students: “Even if you were stuck on something, someone could always explain it to you,” says the photographer. “No Man’s Land” was nominated for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award in 2018 and exhibited at the FOTODOKS Festival in Munich the following year.

**In February 2020,** residents of the resettlement site “Manheim-neu” wait for the passing carnival procession.

**Demonstrators of the action alliance** “Ende Gelände” evade a police blockade during an action in August 2017 and climb a hill back onto the road.

**In November 2021,** the new German government announces its intention to save Keyenberg and four other villages threatened by the Garzweiler II opencast lignite mine. About 80 per cent of the inhabitants had already been relocated by this time.

**Activists carry** a tree trunk through the forest to build a tree house with it.

**“Robin” inhabited** the Hambach Forest for several months. Almost no one here knows the others’ real names, so aliases a.

**Meanwhile,** **the Hambach Forest is occupied by dozens of tree houses**, the highest at about 25 meters. Almost all tree houses can only be reached by climbing, making them difficult to clear.

You must learn to climb if you want to get into the tree houses. You secure yourself with two loops. Like a caterpillar, you then pull yourself up, piece by piece.