No. 1 shaft headframe at Ikeshima Coal Mine seen from its foot, rusted lattice tower filling the frame against blue sky.
No. 1 shaft headframe at Ikeshima Coal Mine seen from its foot, rusted lattice tower filling the frame against blue sky.

Headframe from Below

Provenance

Camera
Nikon F100
Film
Kodak Portra 400 · 35mm · ISO 400
Paper
Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

A steel lattice headframe seen from directly below, filling the frame. Rust bleeding through pale paint on every column, brace and platform. Internal landings and handrails stacked inside the steel. Collapsed roof trusses against a corrugated shed at right. Power lines across the base. Grass and scrub at the foot. Blue sky.

Edition
Open edition

Open edition
Printed to order, no fixed quantity. Each print is hand-signed by the photographer.

Limited edition
A fixed number of prints exist. Once sold, the edition closes permanently. Each print is individually numbered and signed.

$100.00 AUD
Size
Type
Colour
✓
Signed, numbered, with COA. Made to order in 5 to 10 business days (unframed). Shipped in protective packaging with edition certificate, paper-stock reference and a printed care guide.
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In situ

Rusted steel lattice of a mine headframe at Ikeshima, with power lines crossing toward a corrugated shed and dry golden grass on the slope below.Rusted steel lattice of a mine headframe at Ikeshima, with power lines crossing toward a corrugated shed and dry golden grass on the slope below.Rusted steel lattice of a mine headframe at Ikeshima, with power lines crossing toward a corrugated shed and dry golden grass on the slope below.Rusted steel lattice of a mine headframe at Ikeshima, with power lines crossing toward a corrugated shed and dry golden grass on the slope below.Rusted steel lattice of a mine headframe at Ikeshima, with power lines crossing toward a corrugated shed and dry golden grass on the slope below.
01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title
Headframe from Below
Series
Ikeshima
Catalogue
IKE-010
Process
Giclée
Captured
18 January 2026
Camera
Nikon F100
Film
Kodak Portra 400
Format
35mm
Film ISO
400
Paper
Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Location
Ikeshima, Nagasaki, Japan
Recognised by
Highly Commended in Multimedia at the 2016 National Trust of Australia (NSW) Heritage Awards
02 LOCATION

Ikeshima, Nagasaki, Japan

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

Looking up the No. 1 shaft headframe at Ikeshima Coal Mine from its foot, the whole lattice tower filling the frame against a blue sky, rust bleeding through the last of its pale paint on every column, brace and platform. The internal landings and their handrails stack up inside the steel, a gantry of collapsed roof trusses lies against the corrugated shed to the right, and power lines cut across the base. Grass and low scrub have taken the ground around it. From 1967 to 2001 this tower carried the ropes for the island's first vertical shaft; since then it has carried nothing but its own weight, and the rust is slowly taking care of that.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

Looking up the No. 1 shaft headframe at Ikeshima Coal Mine from its foot, the whole lattice tower filling the frame against a blue sky, rust bleeding through the last of its pale paint on every column, brace and platform. The internal landings and their handrails stack up inside the steel, a gantry of collapsed roof trusses lies against the corrugated shed to the right, and power lines cut across the base.

Brett Patman

Ikeshima

The series

Ikeshima

1959 to 2001 · 54 photographs

Ikeshima Coal Mine operated beneath the seabed off Nagasaki from 1959 until 29 November 2001, making it the last new coal mine to open in Japan and the last large-scale underground colliery to close. At its 1970 peak the island held 7,770 residents on a 0.86 km² rock in the Gotō Sea, housed in company-built concrete towers above a mine that reached 650 m below sea level.

View all in this series →

05 SIZE GUIDE

Print sizes

The anatomy view shows what this finish is as a physical object: paper margin, mat band, frame depth, acrylic profile. The comparison strip shows how each size sits relative to the others at true scale. Click a size or a finish to update both.

Anatomy · true ratio
07 MORE FROM IKESHIMA

53 other prints in this series

All prints
Dim office at Ikeshima Coal Mine, a white hard hat and a cup on two desks below a buckled venetian blind.
Hard Hat$100.00
View from an apartment window in Ikeshima-machi, utility pole and wires above silver grass with the Matsushima power station chimney across the sea.
Apartment Window$100.00
Window in the No. 2 Shaft office at Ikeshima Coal Mine, glass gone and a creeper hanging in over the sill above the sea.
Ocean Outlook$100.00
Pithead bath in the No. 2 Shaft office at Ikeshima Coal Mine, concrete troughs on a tiled floor with a vent fan on the far wall.
Pithead Bath$100.00
08 BY POST · NO SPAM

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