I think there is more to this story. This person diliberately misrepresented that city, lied about where the shots were taken, lied about setting things in scene.
Interestingly, Charleroi used to have coal mines, many italians used to work there decades ago, it wouldn’t surprise me if this Italian photographer is in some way connected to charleroi and has some deeper unresolved problems.
More interestingly, I believe that pipeline above is associated with the mining. Also, he says “dark heart”, just like coal is dark.
This whole story and his actions are just too weird, he intentionally went out to attack that city, fully aware of his narrative, I think it has nothing to do with artistic expression, but everything with his resentment towards that city.
Started out doing photography at the age of 6 using an uncle's old 1940 kodak brownie box camera. At 15 years of age, I decided to buy my very own 1975 Praktica SLR camera. I now shoot with a Nikon D850. I do unpaid TFP and commercial paid work.