A myriad of trucks loaded with coal, cycles cart overflowing with round back coal bricks, and an acrid smell: we are in Beijing… The black sobering dust of coal is everywhere: behind the temples, in the alleys, at the corner of big avenues, inside the main entrances, on the stairwells. Patrizia Bonanzinga has followed the path of Chine's coal industry that runs along the Datong- Beijing axis. She has discovered a touching whole, but a very tough universe. She shows this reality in a simple manner through the human interaction with coal. The text that goes together with the photos is written with the same spirit: free from militant engagement, it shows this complex human whole, so simple but also very proud, and it presents the problems linked to the utilization of coal, such as the destruction of the environment, without excluding the tenderness of life that revolves around coal. The aim is to sketch a picture giving life to this Chinese coal world where the human relations are formed by the hardness of the task.

The photographic work shows the various phases of the production and the routing of the coal between Datong (in northern Shanxi province) and Beijing: the various types of coal mines, including one major state-owned mine in Datong with 2000 workers, a small or "local" mine in Datong with 200, and a collectively-owned mine with 25 workers.

Patrizia Bonanzinga, graduated in mathematics at the University of Siena and has worked for about ten years in telecommunications sector for an institute of scientific research. She spent numerous long periods abroad (Mexico, Algeria, USA, France, and China). her passion for photography started during her university studies. She settled in Beijing between 1995 and 1998 and during these days she worked on various subjects linked to China which she has published and exhibited in: the gallery of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (December 1997), the national Gallery of Modern Art, Rome (June-July 1999), the Italian Institute of Culture, Marseille (April 2001), the Atelier François Seigneur & Sylvie de la Dure, Arles (July 2001). She took part in the realization of the book Grammaire de l'objet chinois by Michel Culas (Edition de l'Amateur, Paris 1997), producing, among other things, the cover photo. For two years (1996-1998), she worked on the project The Road to Coal, utilizing only black and white film.

This book, supported by the Fondazione Guido and Ettore De Fornaris, is a wide-ranging study focusing on twentieth-century photography, and opens with an introductory text by Marina Miraglia, divided into two parts, the first of which covers the period from the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1940s, and the second covering the early 1950s to the most recent examples.
The iconographic section recounts the experience in Turin, from shots taken by Mario Gabinio and Stefano Bricarelli in the 1920s and 1930s to the artistic photographs of Carlo Mollino, the photographic report portraying the city after the war and during the most significant events of the 1960s, the anthropological photographs of Ando Gilardi and Paola Agosti, the shots of Paolo Pellion documenting the artistic events of the 1970s, and the photo-works of Paolo Mussat.
The book concludes by focusing on some of the most significant contemporary work, with the photographs of young artists, amongst whom Maura Banfo, Botto & Bruno, Luisa Rabbia and Giulia Caira, who use photography as a means of expressing their art.