Unforgiving temperatures of up to 60℃ (140℉) beat down on these saltminers on a daily basis. The mines, situated in the Afar Triangle in Ethiopia, stretch across 38,000 sq miles and at their lowest point are more than 300ft below sea level. Joel Santos travelled to capture the area’s dry, brutal beauty. Here: Dromedaries and donkeys are used to transport the salt. (Photo by Joel Santos/Barcroft Images)

A woman is pictured in the municipality of Iztapalapa as the outbreak of the coronavirus continues in Mexico City on May 27, 2020. (Photo by Carlos Jasso/Reuters)

Esther Abad free diving in Cenote Chukum, in the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico on June 13, 2022. (Photo by Wojciech Dopierala/Mercury Press)

Workers transport a model of a dinosaur at the exhibition “World of Dinosaurs” at a former lignite surface mining area in Grosspoesna near Leipzig, central Germany, Wednesday, October 29, 2014. A 100-foot long statue of a dinosaur had to be moved Wednesday because German authorities had deemed it a safety risk. Officials feared the sculpture could cause traffic accidents by distracting drivers on a nearby highway. The reptile, one of 50 species on show in the World of Dinosaurs exhibit near Leipzig, was moved to a less conspicuous position further from the road. (Photo by Jens Meyer/AP Photo)

A rainbow forms on water from a spray machine used to suppress coal dust at the Krasnogorsky open pit coal mine, operated by Mechel PJSC, in Mezhdurechensk, Russia, on Monday, July 19, 2021. Russia’s government is betting that coal consumption will continue to rise in big Asian markets like China even as it dries up elsewhere. (Photo by Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg)

“They’ve been obsessing me for years. I searched and found them in Benares, on the banks of the river Gange (India). They arrive here to get rid of everything and to wait for death. This existence can last for years, sometimes decades, almost a life. Opposite to mine, well organised and filled as a human life can be, to try in vain to push the limits of its end”. – Denis Rouvre. (Photo by Denis Rouvre)

Demonstrators hold masks depicting Colombian citizen Mile Virginia, who was murdered along with photojournalist Ruben Espinosa and three other women, during a protest in Mexico City, August 16, 2015. Espinosa, a prominent Mexican news photographer was among five people found dead in a middle-class neighborhood of the capital on July 31, 2015. Espinosa, who worked for the weekly magazine Proceso and the photo agency Cuartoscuro, had sought shelter in Mexico City earlier this summer saying he had been followed and threatened in the eastern state of Veracruz. (Photo by Tomas Bravo/Reuters)

A “creuseur”, or digger, a plastic lantern on his head, readies to enter a copper and cobalt mine in Kawama, Democratic Republic of Congo on June 8, 2016. Cobalt is used in the batteries for electric cars and mobile phones. Working conditions are dangerous, often with no safety equipment or structural support for the tunnels. The diggers say they are paid on average US$2-3/day. (Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)