The Kawah Ijen Volcano by Night

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Photographer Olivier 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. Grunewald shares with us the following other-worldly photos of these men as they do their hazardous work under the light of the moon.

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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.

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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.

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Steam and acidic gases emerge from fumaroles among yellowish chunks of sulfur and burning liquid sulfur on Kawah Ijen.

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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.

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A miner chips away hunks of solid sulfur to take with him back to the mine office.

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A sulfur deposit clings to the edge of an old barrel now embedded in sulfur inside Kawah Ijen.

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Miners labor in hellish conditions to retrieve the sulfur - Photographer Olivier Grunewald describes the smell as overwhelming, requiring a gas mask for safety, which few of the miners possess.

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Miners rest near a fire, holding long crowbars they use to pry the sulfur from the crater.

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A formation caused by liquid sulfur flow inside the crater of Kawah Ijen. When molten, sulfur appears nearly blood red, as it cools, it becomes more and more yellow.