/ 2025 / Press / Nature/Environmental

• Prize
  Honorable Mention
• Photographer
  Chin-Fa Tzeng, Taiwan
• Date of Photograph
  2023/09/12

The scenery is from Mount Ijen in East Java, Indonesia, as beautiful as a fairyland. However, people climb into the crater daily and dig sulphur mines to earn a living. The locals call them miners from hell.
Many young men risk their lives every day to work in mines in the crater without any protection measures. According to news reports, their average life span is no more than 30 years because they breathe poisonous gas daily.

The miners carry 80 kilograms up and down the valley several times a day from the bottom to the top. Their average daily income is only about $ 5 to $ 7 US.