My first visit to the Corcoran Gallery of Art was not entirely a success. On the way over, I struggled through sheets of rain only to arrive and find the storm seeping through the walls of the museum. I watched helplessly as attendants lifted piece after piece off of their hangers and into storage. However, the Corcoran is a stunning building, laden with marble and full of classical statues. It currently plays host to Edward Burtynsky’s photographic exhibit Edward Burtynsky: Oil, a collection of images both aesthetically arresting and intellectually stimulating. My ire quickly evaporated.
Edward Burtynsky: Oil takes up most of the second floor with fifty-five large-scale photographs all showcasing one element—you guessed it: oil. Burtynsky, a Canadian photographer, is renowned for his landscape photography and this exhibit doesn’t disappoint—the photographs are sweeping, wondrous, and scary. His colors are vivid and organic and, like Ansel Adams, Burtynsky has a keen eye for lighting. From glints on polished pipes to scintillant oil sands in the Canadian wilderness caught in the sunrise, Burtynsky chooses his moments well. The culmination of more than a decade of effort, these photographs are beautiful examples of our world’s dependence on the dinosaur wine.
Still, the exhibit is not overtly political. Instead it shows the life cycle of oil: the machines that extract it, the cities and suburbs that depend on it, the desolate landscapes of its pollution and, finally, the gaping wounds left in our earth when it can no longer be found. Side-panel commentary about oil’s harmful effect on our planet is at a minimum—the photographs are allowed to speak for themselves. The first room is devoted mostly to photos of cranes spanning what seems like miles of desert. The second room provides a little comic relief with images of NASCAR and American suburban planning. One photo of a suburb outside of Las Vegas shows a neighborhood ending not twenty-five yards before the precipice of a giant quarry. Talk about where the sidewalk ends.
The final photographs are the most haunting: blown up portraits of trash piles, abandoned drills and decrepit tankers. While the Corcoran is perhaps a bit more oligarchic and not as convenient as its democratic Smithsonian counterparts, Edward Burtynsky: Oil is well worth the trip. If nothing else, you will leave with a more profound understanding of this dark liquid and humanity’s power to drastically and permanently change their world.
The Corcoran Gallery of Art is at 500 Seventeeth Street NW. Edward Burtynsky: Oil runs until December 13.
