Imagine traveling around the world trying to find the ugliest possible places. Then imagine trying to simultaneously convey the ironic beauty and underlying destruction of these places. Edward Burtynsky, a Toronto photographer, has managed to do both by expertly locating and portraying sites that bear terrible witness to man’s excess of industrial waste.
Burtynsky’s current exhibit at the Canadian Embassy is aptly titled “In the Wake of Progress: Images of the Industrial Landscape.” Though the title is self-explanatory, the photographs are far more complex: He conveys not only the destructive imprint man has had on nature, but the dark and almost comical interactions between waste and nature, industry and humanity.
Burtynsky’s photographs neatly fall within his stated theme. The first picture that catches your attention is of endless oilfields in California contrasting sharply with a yellow desert landscape-evidence of man’s ability to create something in a place otherwise desolate. Next is a startling picture of a sleek silver pipeline snaking through the beautiful forestry of the Canadian wilderness in Alberta. The picture produces an uncanny interplay between the beautiful green backdrop and the shimmering pipeline, an image more at home in a Windows screensaver rather than in nature.
Three images display stone quarries and illustrate that, whether or not you believe in Gaia, man has undeniably altered nature. One of the pictures features men working in the quarry and resembles a computer game with lemmings scaling ladders and toiling away. The angular picture suggests that man is trapped in his own creation and that changing mother nature has certain unseen effects that makes man a prisoner of his own designs.
Moving away from the symbolic, a few photos contain large piles of tires that force us to face the fact that, with our conspicuous consumption, the trash has to end up somewhere. One picture is especially striking: large tire piles surround a lonely truck situated in a valley with rolling hills as the backdrop. The image frightens by suggesting that the tires will replace the rolling hills of grass in the background. Whether man is represented by the trailer or not, the idea is clear: pretending that our consumerism does not have lasting effects is an illusion, and one cannot help but wonder how many “tire” landscapes are hidden across the globe.
On the other side of the world, Burtynsky has expressively portrayed the ship-breaking industry of Bangladesh through the surreal colors of rusty red dominating the shores of towed and stripped ships. Entire ship compartments appear absurd as they are no longer part of a ship, but out-of-place parts ready to be stripped for all their value. Ship-breaking, lucrative yet dangerous, is a speaks of man’s complete “productive” cycle.
Most dramatically, Burtynsky’s final series shows the nickel tailings of Ontario. For non-chem majors, nickel tailings simply and undeniably resemble rivers of blood, and Burtynsky starkly sets them against desolate black ground on a gray Ontario morning. By skillfully utilizing the focus of the picture, he fools the viewer into thinking it is a grand majestic landscape, when the picture in fact represents only an area the size of a Village C dorm room.
This exhibit, running through Sept. 19, is worth seeing. Not only does it give you an excuse to see the Canadian Embassy in all its glory (as if you needed an excuse) but you can also visit the nearby National Gallery. Even if you have already had your share of environmentalist photography, Burtynsky’s loaded and remarkable photographs will undoubtedly strike the viewer with their intensity.
The Canadian Embassy is located at 501 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
