Office in the No. 2 Shaft office at Ikeshima Coal Mine, desks pushed together under papers with daylight through slatted blinds.
Office in the No. 2 Shaft office at Ikeshima Coal Mine, desks pushed together under papers with daylight through slatted blinds.

Scattered Desks

Provenance

Camera
Nikon F100
Film
Fujifilm Velvia 50 · 35mm · ISO 50
Paper
Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

Desks pushed together under papers, trays and a keyboard. A torn sheet of red plastic on the floor. Loose documents drifted under the windows. Slatted blinds on two windows at the far wall. An air conditioner in the corner. Ceiling tiles missing, cabling hanging.

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
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Type
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In situ

Interior of a derelict office at Ikeshima Coal Mine, with horizontal blinds casting banded light across paper-strewn desks, a large dark monitor, a white air conditioning unit, and a sagging ceiling with visible water damage.Interior of a derelict office at Ikeshima Coal Mine, with horizontal blinds casting banded light across paper-strewn desks, a large dark monitor, a white air conditioning unit, and a sagging ceiling with visible water damage.Interior of a derelict office at Ikeshima Coal Mine, with horizontal blinds casting banded light across paper-strewn desks, a large dark monitor, a white air conditioning unit, and a sagging ceiling with visible water damage.Interior of a derelict office at Ikeshima Coal Mine, with horizontal blinds casting banded light across paper-strewn desks, a large dark monitor, a white air conditioning unit, and a sagging ceiling with visible water damage.Interior of a derelict office at Ikeshima Coal Mine, with horizontal blinds casting banded light across paper-strewn desks, a large dark monitor, a white air conditioning unit, and a sagging ceiling with visible water damage.
01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title
Scattered Desks
Series
Ikeshima
Catalogue
IKE-044
Process
Giclée
Captured
17 January 2026
Camera
Nikon F100
Film
Fujifilm Velvia 50
Format
35mm
Film ISO
50
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

An office in the safety wing of the No. 2 Shaft office building at Ikeshima Coal Mine, left much as it was worked. Desks are pushed together and still carry their trays, papers and a keyboard, a torn sheet of red plastic lies on the floor, and loose documents have drifted under the windows. Slatted blinds cut the daylight into bars across the far wall, an air conditioner stands in the corner, and cabling hangs where the ceiling tiles have come away. Around 2,500 people were on the mine's books when it closed in 2001, and rooms like this one ran the paperwork behind them.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

An office in the safety wing of the No. 2 Shaft office building at Ikeshima Coal Mine, left much as it was worked. Desks are pushed together and still carry their trays, papers and a keyboard, a torn sheet of red plastic lies on the floor, and loose documents have drifted under the windows.

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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