A movie fragment tells the story of the owner of the open-air marble quarry in Carrara, Italy

In Yuri Ancarani's documentary Il Capo, The Chief, the visual effects are stunning. The filmmaker focused on a quarry owner who used gestures to guide the excavation work until a huge block of marble was excavated on the mountainside of Carrara, Italy. The marble is white with fine dark textures-Mikangro's David and Pieta, the Pantheon, and even the marble plaque on the tombstone of Thomas Jefferson are all made of this rock, since ancient Rome Has been praised since. 

The video channel website Nowness provides us with excerpts and ideas from Ancarani:

"I was deeply attracted by the dean and watched his work," said Ankarani, whose film is currently being screened at the Whitechapel Gallery in London as part of Artist Film International (a film, video and animation tour). "How he uses a huge excavator to move huge blocks of marble, but his own movements are light, precise and firm.

This excerpt does not indicate whether the missing digital hints of il capo are related to his work. But a blog post by Kelly Borsheim pointed out that none of the workers she saw in Carrera were wearing ear, lung or hand protection.

Stanford University professor Marc Levoy recorded the process of mining marble in another open pit near Pietrasanta. He pointed out that many other marble quarries in the world are mines. He wrote:

During the Renaissance, people mined marble by inserting wooden piles into naturally occurring cracks in the rock, and then pour water on the wooden piles to expand them. Eventually, the rock will split, releasing a piece of marble. The main tool of modern quarrying is a steel wire rope with a diameter of 1 cm, with diamond-encrusted collars installed at 5 cm intervals. Drill a hole in the mountain, and the cable passes through the hole to form a loop, which is driven by a motor at high speed.

The working conditions in these marble mines have always been oppressive. An article in the New York Times in 1894 reported that many quarry workers were former criminals and "judicial fugitives." These conditions created the cradle of revolution for Carrara, which became "the original hotbed of Italian anarchism." That political moment may have passed, but one aspect of quarry life has remained the same: it is hard work. 

Marissa Fessenden is a freelance science writer and artist who appreciates small things and vast spaces.

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