From toxic to futuristic: miners, their landscape and the manipulation of (British) heritage.

The photographs of the mines, collieries and their landscapes are a very important part of British heritage. This chapter analyses two moments in this process of aestheticisation. A series of images by Patrick Ward provides a glimpse into the life of mining communities in the 1960s to historicise the complex relationship between miners and their landscape through a photographic narrative. Then the consequences of the mining industry as a post-industrial narrative will be explored in the work of Richard Jones Energy+Notion (2016) describing Wales where coal mines are being replaced by windmills. This is a transmutation of energy that has profoundly affected the identity of local communities. In both of these examples, the toxic act performed is overcome by art: the photographic gaze questions the function of memory and the concept of heritage by highlighting toxicity as a realisation of the Sublime.