Unexpected beauty ================= * Vivian Tors **Manufactured landscapes: the photographs of Edward Burtynsky** Curator: Lori Pauli, Assistant Curator of Photographs, National Gallery of Canada National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa Jan. 31 – May 4, 2003 Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto Jan. 24 – Apr. 2004 Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York City Sept. 23 – Dec. 11, 2005 ![Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/170/12/1827/F1.medium.gif) [Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/170/12/1827/F1) Figure. **Edward Burtynsky, 2000.** *Shipbreaking #31, Chittagong, Bangladesh.*** Dye coupler print, 127 cm** х**102 cm** Photo by: Collection of Vahan and Susan Kololian ![Figure2](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/170/12/1827/F2.medium.gif) [Figure2](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/170/12/1827/F2) Figure. **Edward Burtynsky, 1999.** *Oxford Tire Pile #8, Westley, California.*** Dye coupler print, 102 cm** х** 127 cm** Photo by: Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery ![Figure3](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/170/12/1827/F3.medium.gif) [Figure3](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/170/12/1827/F3) Figure. **Edward Burtynsky, 1985.** *Railcuts #8, C.N. Track, Thompson River, British Columbia***. Dye coupler print, 69 cm** х** 86 cm** Photo by: National Gallery of Canada The son of Ukrainian immigrants, photographer Edward Burtynsky says his history begins in Canada. It is fitting that the mid-career retrospective of his work organized by the National Gallery of Canada and exhibited most recently at the Art Gallery of Ontario should open with a selection of his 1985 images of railway cuts through the Rocky Mountains. Exactly 100 years before, the completion of Canada's transcontinental railroad had allowed the young country to assert its nationhood and proclaim its optimism about the future. This spirit of optimism permeates Burtynsky's work: his photographs crackle with an energy that seems to echo the spirit of new arrivals to North America seeking a better life in a fabled land of open spaces and vast potential. They also draw attention to the impact of taking this seemingly limitless resource for granted. Burtynsky's work is about scale: the massively altered landscapes he documents are transformed into large works ranging up to 100 cm х 150 cm. But, as with every aspect of Burtynsky's carefully considered work, size is never a superfluous attribute: a huge “canvas” is necessary to convey the monumental scale of his vision and subject matter. This perfect convergence of form and content results in a surprising beauty. Burtynsky's work is propelled by, and communicates, the same spirit of discovery as the work of Carleton Watkins, who photographed the landscape of the 19th-century American West. Watkins was a great influence on Burtynsky, whose photographs (like Watkins') are beautiful in the awe they arouse. What is unique in Burtynsky's images, however, is that he is able to render what he terms “transformed” landscapes with the same degree of sublime beauty as his 19th-century predecessor did in documenting those in a more natural state. Burtynsky's ability to achieve this unexpected outcome is the quality that particularly energizes his photographs and makes them so intriguing. When considering *Oxford Tire Pile #8, Westley California* (1999) from a series of photographs of the world's largest pile of discarded rubber tires, one would expect that Burtynsky would compose and frame his image to draw the viewer's attention only to the environmental impact of such waste. Although he does convey this message, he paradoxically chooses a muted, earth-toned palette and a raised vantage point to inject the scene with an element of grandeur, one that seems almost to celebrate the enormous scale of these mountains of tires. This characteristic reinforces the sense of optimism in Burtynsky's work. Part of this impression stems from his desire to photograph only the biggest examples of any given subject — tire piles in California, spent copper mines in Pennsylvania, or nickel tailings outside Sudbury, Ont. His images somehow manage to communicate both the optimism and the naïveté of our belief in the inexhaustibility of nature. Precisely capturing the inherent contradictions in our North American approach to life, they create an unsettling irony but are also strangely affirming. Burtynsky's photographs are not all executed in North America, but they all reveal the enormous labour required to transform the landscapes he documents. Included in the exhibition are images of the world's largest marble quarries in Carrara, Italy, and selections from a series documenting shipbreaking in Chittagong, Bangladesh. In this group of photographs, which physically concludes the exhibition, Burtynsky's work undergoes a major shift, investing his work with even greater impact. To this point, Burtynsky has avoided the overt inclusion of the human presence — it is always subordinate to the machinery that humans have developed to transform nature. In the shipbreaking series, humans are much more prominent because of his realization that so much work in the developing world is still performed by poorly paid labourers. As he photographed the shipbreakers, dismantling massive freighters by hand, Burtynsky was struck by their primitive working conditions. This personal involvement is conveyed most compellingly through his photographs of the barefooted, vulnerable workers dwarfed by the huge hulks of ships. His inclusion of the tiny, fading marks of their footprints in the foreground sand, in images such as *Shipbreaking #31, Chittagong, Bangladesh* (2000), speak volumes about the conditions in which these men labour. Burtynsky has stated that his choice of subject matter does not stem not from a desire to editorialize on environmental issues or to make political statements about the impact of industrialization. But in the shipbreaking series his sense of injustice has been aroused, infusing his already outstanding work with additional power. **Vivian Tors** Visual Artist Ottawa, Ont. ## Footnotes * An excellent accompanying catalogue, edited by Lori Pauli and published in 2003 by the National Gallery of Canada in association with Yale University Press is also available at [http://national.gallery.ca](http://national.gallery.ca).