Tin Mine Landscapes

Shalini Ganendra Fine Art is showing Eric Peris’s ‘Tin Mine’ series this month. A body of 41 black and white photographs shot on film in the ’70s, these photographs first appeared in an eponymously titled book and document our nation’s past, which was built – or rather, mined – from tin. These glory days aren’t exactly spelt out in the show. In fact, it’s mostly bleak landscapes here; human presence is low and the stillness in the quarries and ponds all signal the impending change. And change sneaks up on even art, it seems; most of Peris’s original negatives have disintegrated with time and only 23 have been salvaged with digital technology.