Tomas Chadim

Ústí nad Labem region is a region deeply marked by its history, especially by two events that forever distorted the established color of the landscape. Coal mining and the displacement of the original German population after World War II. The first led to the devastation of the once beautiful landscape and to the massive infiltration of heavy industry into the landscape. The second then disrupted the continuity of the relationship of local people to the landscape, property and land. These conditions formed a unique industrial landscape, set between the panorama of the Central Highlands, the Ore Mountains and the Doupovské Mountains. The ruin and decline of a once prosperous region. But also hidden visual poetry. Abandoned industrial buildings alternate with contemporary industrial development. All this characterizes this region and distinguishes it from the rest of the Czech landscape. The photographs in this book were not taken by a person. The photographer is a robotic camera placed on the roof of a car of an Internet map provider. So I am just an editor. This book is a kind of poetic analysis of the industrial landscape of northwestern Bohemia. However, the book does not answer the question of how people live in this landscape.