The project had its origins in a trip Mr. Schell and his family took to Shanxi Province in northern China — an area he called “coal country.” It was, he said, “one of the most arresting and tipping-point moments” of all of the years he has spent studying China.

“The landscape was so desecrated, and so bleak,” he said. “There were some villages; there were piles of huge mountains of fly ash; there were piles of coal. You didn’t see the sun.”