Edward Burtynsky's Manufactured Landscapes

I went to the National Gallery of Canada yesterday to see Edward

Burtynsky give a guided tour of a major exhibit of his work that runs

until May 4. The exhibit, entitled Manufactured Landscapes, consists

of photographs of industrial sites in Canada, the US, Italy and

Bangladesh. I was greatly impressed both by Mr. Burtynsky and his

photographs, and thought I'd pass on some information about aspects

of the exhibit that are available on the internet.

 

The Gallery and the Yale University Press have published a catalogue

of the exhibit and the Gallery has made good use of its web site:

see

http://national.gallery.ca/exhibitions/exhibitions/Burtynsky/english/visual/index.html

 

The site includes several photographs: nickel tailings at the Inco

operation in Sudbury, Ontario; Adam Pirie Quarry, Barre, Vermont; a

shipbreaking operation at Chittagong, Bangladesh; a marble quarry at

Carrara, Italy; Kennecot Copper Mine, Bingham Valley, Utah; and an

abandoned Shaft at Inco's Crean Hill Mine, Sudbury. The photos look

ok on the internet, but do not begin to approach the originals.

 

The site also has an interview with Mr. Burtynsky covering artistic,

technical and business issues. The interview is in 13 parts and can

be accessed either as video or as text. At the site, click on the

link Cybermuse to access this material.

 

For those who are interested in technical information, Mr. Burtynsky

uses a Phillips 8x10 (he commented that it is comparatively light)

and a Linhof 4x5. He uses several kinds of film and a wide range of

lenses (for the 4x5, 10 lenses ranging from 50mm to 400mm).

 

He owns Image Works (www.torontoimageworks.com), which he says makes

his photography possible, and he is currently doing a photographic

series in China.

Please note that in the link to the exhibit web site, there should not be a space in the word "visual"

Thanks Rory for finding and sharing this site. Beautiful prints. Having been in Sudbury years ago it's amazing anyone could find something beautiful about the place. His ramblings are a bit thin in content, but interesting non-the-less. I am sure a one-on-one with him would be interesting.

How were the prints "up close and personal"? (what sort of size are they?)

 

I've only seen magazine reproductions and I certainly find it interesting work.

 

Never realised he owned Toronto Image Works - huh.

 

I guess the Phillips is becoming the camera of "real" photographers ;-)

 

tim

 

PS - did you see the Lynn Cohen exhibition there last year?

Eric,

 

Burtynsky made the point that the corporate owners of the sites that he photographs are often sensitive about giving him access. In the case of the Sudbury tailings photographs, he went straight to the President of Inco. This was a good move, because when he showed up in Sudbury, the site operator thought that the head office had gone mad. At his talk yesterday, Burtynsky offered some advice for people who want to do this kind of work: dealing with a corporation's PR department is a waste of time; you have to go to the top, show them your portfolio and convince them that your intentions are not adversarial.

 

Tim,

 

The photographs are big. For example, the ones on the web site of the tailings at Inco are 102cm x 152cm or 40" x 60".

 

Burtynsky wants to be known as a printmaker as well as a photographer and he does his own printing. This is facilitated by his ownership of Image Works, which I gather is a very successful business with some 35 employees. He said that the creation of Image Works was an essential step in realizing his objectives.

 

Burtynsky also said that he takes as many as 200 shots of a subject, using all of the available types of film, and then starts experimenting with paper. He said that the only filter he uses is a polarizer. One was used for the photographs of iron tailings to decrease reflection from what he called a "river of rust". He does not digitize his images, although the exhibit contains one exception. In about 1985, he photographed a series consisting of railroad track cuttings into the sides of mountains in the Rockies. When he was working with the curator to put the exhibit together, he concluded that one of the negatives had lost contrast over the years. This photograph was digitized and the contrast was restored.

 

In about 1990, Burtynsky started using an 8x10 camera and has since used that camera more frequently than his 4x5. That decision also coincided with what strikes me as a dramatic change in his photographic style. In my view, the 1985 photographs are simply not in the same league as the those from 1990 onward. It's probably also worth noting that he spent most of 1985-90 getting Image Works off the ground and appears to have done little photography during that period.

 

For the Bangladesh photographs, he used both an 8x10 and a 4x5. His original intention was to photograph the world's largest operation dedicated to breaking up cargo ships. The company is in India, but he could not get access because Greenpeace put the operation under the public spotlight several months before, alleging that the west was dumping toxic waste, in the form of cargo ships, on third world countries.

 

Having been thwarted, Burtynsky arranged to go to Bangladesh, which has the world's second largest shipbreaking operation. He immediately ran into a problem. The workers, who make US$ .10 per hour doing dangerous work with no safety equipment, thought that his intention was to document their techniques in order to start a competing operation in Canada. Once they were satisifed that his intentions were benign, co-operation was forthcoming and Burtynsky managed to make some absolutely stunning photographs. On his return to Canada, he used part of the proceeds from sale of the photographs to purchase 2,000 safety goggles, which he sent to Bangladesh.

 

Burtynsky is using only a 4x5 for his current project in China. He said that carrying both sets of gear is getting too difficult, especially given current airport/airline procedures.

Became a huge fan of his after seeing the Belridge oilfield work in a recent "Blind Spot"

 

Great selection of his works here:

 

http://www.cowlesgallery.com/Burtynsky.html

 

and (fewer works, larger linked images) here:

 

http://www.godardgallery.com/burt.htm

 

Amazon says his limited-edition book (from Lumiere) will be rereleased in a larger (ostensibly mass-produced, not handmade) edition in May.

Roger,

 

Thanks for the additional links.

 

The book referred to on Amazon is actually the catalogue for the exhibit at the National Gallery. The book is available now from the Gallery's bookshop (US$50) and from Amazon's Canadian operation (US$55, www.amazon.ca)

Rory, just wanted to take a moment and say "thanks!" Seems like the forum has taken a turn towards the "should I buy this or should I buy that" since photo.net made their grab and Q and others dropped out. Made it about half way through the very excellent material and am looking forward to my lunch break to look and read some more. The LF forum at it's VERY best.

Anyone keen on seeing Burtynsky's work, and are in the Toronto area, can head down to the Art Gallery of Ontario from now until mid April, I believe. The whole manufactured landscapes exhibit is on display, plus some of the Yangtze Gorge project.

 

I've just come back from the gallery this afternoon, and it was a wonderful experience. I have seen his work on display at one of the Yorkville galleries during the Contact Festival, and the odd print at Image Works, but I must say, this AGO exhibit takes the cake. I don't recall the last time a photo exhibit had such a big chunk of the gallery - this is in no small part due to the size of his prints!

 

Burtynsky is truly a magnificent photographer, and I must admit, upon seeing his work I often find myself wondering if I shouldn't just pawn my gear and give the hobby up. It's very daunting.

 

If anyone has the opportunity to see this exhibit, I'd love to hear your thoughts, as it really does knock my socks off.

 

Marco

Unlike earlier offerings the video accompanying the AGO exhibition isn't rambling. It's structured on some decent questions and gives good insight, including his nugget on his enjoyment of LF - it forces you to slow down. Nectar to the battered ego of any novice struggling to understand why LF punishes impatience so vehemently.

<i> his nugget on his enjoyment of LF - it forces you to slow down. </i><p>

 

His next series involves shooting while wearing shackles and an eyepatch then, I assume.

Just got home from a three-hour visit to the Ed Burtynsky exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

 

It was breath-taking. I'm still giddy from standing in front of those huge (40x50") prints, amazing to experience a print of that size enveloping you .... stunning.

 

The place was pretty packed, surprising for a photo-exhibit, but was family day.

 

The exhibit closes on April 4th, if you can get here you won't be disappointed.

saw Burtynsky's NY show a few weeks ago. Someone recently pointed out this New York Times review to me and it confirmd my own experience. Burtynsky is much more a commercial photogrpahy or journyman photojournalist than an artist. Cliched its certainly the best way to describe much of his work. National Geographic pics with a big camera: <br>

 

<i>October 28, 2005

Photography Review | 'Manufactured Landscapes'- NYTimes . Edward Burtynsky, the Canadian photographer whose large, sumptuous and numbingly clich餠color pictures are in a big exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, specializes in a familiar genre that historians have called "the industrial sublime." His subjects include oil fields, rock quarries, junkyards, factories, mines and other large-scale enterprises, but the key to his work is his formal approach. Whether shooting small things close-up (piles of discarded circuit boards awaiting recycling, for example) or big things from a distance (like marble quarries in India), he frames the subject so that it not only fills the entire picture but also, you can't help imagining, extends almost infinitely in every direction. <br>

 

The effect is disorienting, awesome and alarming. The extremely detailed images often look like scenes in a Hollywood thriller. But Mr. Burtynsky has more high-minded motives. He wants to show people how human activities have altered, for better or worse, our experience of the earth's natural topography. Hence the title of his exhibition, "Manufactured Landscapes." (The exhibition was organized and circulated by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.) <br>

 

One of the problems with Mr. Burtynsky's photography is that he uses the same pumped-up pictorial rhetoric of shock and awe in almost every one of the more than 60 works on view. This produces a monotonous effect and, what's worse, a loss of representational credibility. By applying the same compositional formula to every subject, from California tire dumps to new buildings in China, Mr. Burtynsky hammers away at the idea of the global proliferation of industrial production, destruction and waste. But he leaves out a lot of information, too.<br>

 

Because his pictures give so little sense of the physical limits of their subjects, they also convey little sense of context in broader ways. Those multicolored blocks of compacted scrap metal may look dangerously toxic, but aren't they going to be recycled, and isn't that a good thing? That ambiguity is itself another clich麠making bad things appear visually seductive and good things look scary is one of photography's oldest tricks. <br>

 

Sometimes Mr. Burtynsky's photographs are misleading. Among the most arresting pictures are ones showing what appear to be aerial views of rivers colored intensely red and orange, as if they were burning within from some incredibly poisonous waste. Then you realize that these waterways are actually small enough to walk across; and a wall label explains that the color comes from iron oxide waste from a nickel mine, which seems less poisonous than the pictures would lead you to believe. <br>

 

Some visitors may observe parallels between Mr. Burtynsky's work and the photographic catalogs of industrial structures by the Germans Bernd and Hilla Becher and the photographs of spectacular modern subjects like rock concerts and big box stores by Andreas Gursky. The works of the New Topographers, like Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz and Frank Gohlke, who with almost scientific objectivity have documented the effects of human activities on landscapes of the American West, also come to mind.<br>

 

The difference between the works of those artists and Mr. Burtynsky's is that they mostly avoided conventionally picturesque approaches to their subject matter. Mr. Burtynsky's photographic vision is closer to that of National Geographic magazine. Though technically impressive and, because of its scale, important-seeming, it offers nothing about photography or about the world that we have not already seen in the works of countless other proficient, globe-trotting photojournalists whose names have faded into the oblivion of artistic mediocrity.</i>

 

 

I'm sure that if Burtynsky was an American the Times would have been all over him gushing superlatives while wrapping him in an American flag. It's review is a nasty character assination and is shameful. The newspaper has a justifiably questionable reputation, so this yellow journalism is to be expected. I'm certain most Americans would be embarassed by this dog in the manger piece. Mr Burtynsky's work will be around long after this critic has hung up his keyboard