This paper examines the work of Canadian photographer Ed Burtynsky, focusing on how his large-scale photographic series — including "Mines," "Quarries," "Railcuts," and "China" — document the environmental impact of human industrial activity. The essay argues that Burtynsky's photographs offer a uniquely effective aesthetic response to climate change by showing rather than telling, allowing viewers to draw their own conclusions from images of man-made landscape disruption. A close compositional reading of "Feng Jie #3," from the "Three Gorges Dam Project" series, illustrates how Burtynsky uses traditional photographic elements to frame his environmental message.
My immediate response to Burtynsky's work was to think that the artist had managed to find a relevant aesthetic response to the most serious issue of the twenty-first century: climate change. The difficulty with climate change is that it does not lend itself easily to artistic representation or commentary. Any small child knows that slowly and painstakingly building a castle out of Legos is not as exciting as destroying one. Ecology can seem tedious, and destruction can seem fun. Burtynsky's work sidesteps this difficulty because, in some sense, he is documenting the destruction.
This does not mean Burtynsky's work feels message-driven. In his photographic series documenting the large-scale changes that human beings make on their physical environment — such as "Mines," "Quarries," and "Railcuts" — Burtynsky is showing rather than telling. Each of these series captures landscapes large enough to constitute actual geological phenomena, yet each is entirely man-made. His work does not preach a save-the-planet message; instead, it allows the viewer to infer the presence of human activity behind these panoramic views of "un-natural" landscapes.
The term "un-natural" is apt because Burtynsky's work first meets the eye as standard nature photography — a sort of Ansel Adams in Technicolor — until the viewer realizes that these are not natural scenes at all, but scenes of man-made disruption.
Burtynsky's work appeals for its relevance. We live in an era when climate change is happening fast due to human activity, while humans are not responding quickly enough to a crisis of such magnitude. While other art forms may attempt to capture an environmental theme — plenty of Hollywood films carry an obvious ecological message — photographs like Burtynsky's do not manipulate an audience the way a movie does. His pictures merely provide evidence and let the audience draw their own sober conclusions.
In some sense, the major work of aesthetic ordering and organization in Burtynsky's photographs is not the photography itself but the man-made structures and scenes he depicts. This complicates our category of "the aesthetic," insofar as many of these devastated scenes possess their own haunting and desolate beauty — and that, clearly, is part of Burtynsky's point. The relationship between environmental art and activism has long been debated, but Burtynsky occupies a distinctive position: bearing witness without prescribing a response.
Burtynsky's series "China" depicts the environmental and landscape changes caused by large-scale human development projects during China's ongoing economic boom. For example, Burtynsky's photograph "Feng Jie #3," from the "Three Gorges Dam Project, Yangtze River, China 2002" series, is only a little more than ten years old, and shows construction on an electrical generation dam being built on one of China's largest rivers. The Three Gorges Dam is the world's largest hydroelectric project and required the displacement of over a million people, providing a charged backdrop for Burtynsky's lens.
"Close reading of color, framing, and human scale"
You’re 72% through this paper. Sign up to read the remaining 1 section.
Sign Up Now — Instant Access Already a member? Log inAlways verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.