The Ijen volcano complex is a group of composite volcanoes in the East Java, Indonesia; in the crater of this active volcano there is a famous sulfur mine and here, for about 40 years, about 400 miners are lowered into toxic fumes and extract the element from the sheets of the volcanic walls.

They carry about 70 kilograms of sulfur for several km between toxic fumes and very hard climbs. All for around 6/7 dollars a day. this is the price with which the sulfur, once extracted, is bought by an Indonesian cosmetics company.

My name is Manlio C. De Pasquale from Italy, I was born on 27 october in 1977 in the city of Naples. I use to say about me that I am a self made passionate Photographer and Traveller. My first approaches with photography took place during adolescence, with an old film kodak, I started to take pictures of everything: objects, friends, classmates, many concerts (being a great fan of hard rock and heavy metal), very soon me and the camera became inseparable friends, after this first phase there was the transition to digital.

Over the time the passion for photography has matured by travelling, for the need to freeze an emotion, to fix it forever and to have the chance to revive it, then matured also in an emotional quest for the daily life, but the journey gives me the opportunity to tell and remember the places through always unknown emotions, because I never know what to expect from a new place, and often some emotions remain connected elsewhere, photography is a way to keep in touch.

I try to give life to all my emotions by telling a place in all his aspects, more than a “documentarist reportage” I use to approach to my shots as an “inner journey” through which you can see a place by my soul more than my eyes.Shooting is a meeting with himself, and this is the way I live my photographic experience, the shooting is an emotive meeting with myself.