Edward Burtynsky: on Manufactured Landscapes + Oil

"Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.

These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times."

In Manufactured Landscapes, Burtynksy's produced a series of still photography, contextualizing his photographs in the global cycles of energy, production, and waste, by cinematically inhabiting the subjects of his work. While his work serves as a commentary on the impact of large-scale industrialization, Burtynsky claims to neither criticize nor praise these developments, but to bring images to viewers in the hopes of opening their eyes to the realities of the contemporary world.


The series investigates:
1. The production cycle in China (Factories and Recycling),
2. Energy in China (coal industry and Three Gorges Dam),
3. globalization,
4. extraction industries (minding and the oil industries in Canada and U.S.), and also
5. urbanization in China (transformation of old neighbourhoods in Shanghai)

His exhibition on Oil surveys his 10-year journey of expansive documentation into the subjects of oil from:

1. extraction and refinement—how it is drawing from the earth, processed for our use
2. It then proceeds to show how oil is used and its effects—urbanization, roads, cars, etc.
3. And concludes with the destruction and consequences that lie at the end of oil—vast recycling yards, immense installations of defunct oil fields, breaking down of oil tankers