Kawah Ijen by night (C Olivier Grunewald)

December 8, 2010

Kawah Ijen by night

Photographer  Oliver Grunewald has recently made several trips into the sulfur mine in the crater of the Kawah Ijen volcano in East Java, Indonesia, bringing with him equipment to capture surreal images lit by moonlight, torches, and the blue flames of burning molten sulfur. The miners of the 2,600 meter tall (8,660ft) Kawah Ijen volcano trek up to the crater, then down to the shore of a 200-meter-deep crater lake of sulfuric acid, where they retrieve heavy chunks of pure sulfur to carry back to a weighing station. Mr. Grunewald has been kind enough to share with us the following other-worldly photos of these men as they do their hazardous work under the light of the moon.

A sulfur miner stands inside the crater of the Kawah Ijen volcano at night, holding a torch, looking towards a flow of liquid sulfur which has caught fire and burns with an eerie blue flame. (© Olivier Grunewald)

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Descending into the Kawah Ijen caldera, a one-kilometer-wide acidic crater lake lies in the middle. On its shore, the sulfur mining operation. (© Olivier Grunewald) 

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Flaming molten sulfur flows inside the volcanic crater. Sulfur will melt at just above 100 C (212 F), but the temperatures in the crater do not get high enough for spontaneous combustion - the fires are lit by the miner's dripping torches. (© Olivier Grunewald)