Exhibit Review

Manufactured Landscapes: The Photographs of Edward Burtynsky
Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn, New York
October 7, 2005 through January 15, 2006

Landscape painting and photography have had a long dialogue with industrialism. Nineteenth-century photographers like Carleton Watkins proclaimed the majesty of the American West as unspoiled wilderness was already diminishing. Today, human activity has so altered the global terrain and transformed the atmosphere over the entire planet, there is no longer a nature outside of culture. For the last 25 years, Edward Burtynsky has photographed the results of our domination of ecological systems.

Burtynsky’s images insist that we look at the ugly secrets behind the pleasures of our consumption. He has documented the removal of natural resources from the earth as well as the disposal of the resulting waste. The results are achingly beautiful photographs of devastated places. Shot with a view camera, largely in diffused light, the photographs present in rich detail the scale of the change wrought upon the earth. While there are echoes of many other photographers in this work, from the industrial images of Charles Sheeler to the factory floors of Andreas Gursky, the muted palette, often with accents of super-saturated color and emphasis on textural detail, are characteristic of Burtynsky’s unique formal approach.

Starting with the railroad, advancing to the internal combustion engine and finally to the surge of economic development in contemporary China, Burtynsky’s progression of subject matter parallels the history of industrialism. However dispassionately Burtynsky begins his exploration, his claim of neutrality becomes unbelievable as the work unfolds. In Railcuts, shot in the early 1980s, mountainsides are intersected by the evidence of man, yet nature remains a powerful force. By the Oilfields and Refineries series, shot almost 20 years later, the extent of human transformation is absolute, eliciting a mixture of awe and horror. Looking at the destruction behind the façade of contemporary culture will inevitably alter any viewer’s perception of the conveniences of daily life.

published in Exposure, the journal of the Society for Photographic Education, Spring 2006