Photo Corners headlinesarchivemikepasini.com


A   S C R A P B O O K   O F   S O L U T I O N S   F O R   T H E   P H O T O G R A P H E R

Reviews of photography products that enhance the enjoyment of taking pictures. Published frequently but irregularly.

Burtynsky Follows 'Oil' With 'Water' Share This on LinkedIn   Share This on Google   Tweet This   Forward This

4 October 2013

Photographer Edward Burtynsky has followed his 12-year project photographing the culture of oil with an appreciation for water with shows at several galleries, a Steidl-published book, a film and a new iPad app.

Burtynsky explained his lastest project:

While trying to accommodate the growing needs of an expanding, and very thirsty civilization, we are reshaping the Earth in colossal ways. In this new and powerful role over the planet, we are also capable of engineering our own demise. We have to learn to think more long-term about the consequences of what we are doing, while we are doing it. My hope is that these pictures will stimulate a process of thinking about something essential to our survival; something we often take for granted -- until it's gone.

The film Watermark is a new feature-length documentary shot in 5K ultra high-definition video and co-directed by Jennifer Baichwal and Burtynsky. It will be released in Canada by Mongrel Media. Here's the trailer:

The Trailer. Coming soon to a theater near you.

The 229-page hardcover book , printed by Steidl with 114 color plates will be published in conjunction with the touring exhibition of over 60 prints. Water is available now for preorder for $78.79.

The $9.99 iPad app, optimized for Retina displays, presents the contents of the book in an interactive presentation including explanations and zoom-in for exporation of select images and maps showing locations where images wer created. Audio commentary has been added to 57 of the 114 images with detailed zooms on 43. We very much enjoyed the Oil iPad app when we reviewed it last year.

More details about the project are in the project notes below.

Burtynsky On 'Water'

"While trying to accommodate the growing needs of an expanding and very thirsty civilization, we are reshaping the Earth in colossal ways. In this new and powerful role over the planet, we are also capable of engineering our own demise. We have to learn to think more long-term about the consequences of what we are doing, while we are doing it. My hope is that these pictures will stimulate a process of thinking about something essential to our survival; something we often take for granted -- until it's gone." -- Edward Burtynksy

The project takes us over gouged landscapes, fractal patterned delta regions, ominously coloured biomorphic shapes, rigid and rectilinear stepwells, massive circular pivot irrigation plots, aquaculture and social, cultural and ritual gatherings. Water is intermittently introduced as a victim, a partner, a protagonist, a lure, a source, an end, a threat and a pleasure.Water is also often completely absent from the pictures. Burtynsky instead focuses on the visual and physical effects of the lack of water, giving its absence an even more powerful presence.

GULF OF MEXICO

When BP's Deepwater Horizon well began pouring millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in May 2010, Edward Burtynsky traveled to the site to capture the event. Though characteristically spectacular and expressly an evolution of the photographer's more recent aerial shooting method, the images present something of a departure for Burtynsky, who has said of his work "I understand that it has an editorial aspect to it, but nothing I photograph is typically a news event. I'm not so much into chasing disasters as I am into looking at big industrial incursions into the landscape or in this case, the seascape."

This Oil Spill imagery, while expressing the familiar grand scale of Burtynsky's oeuvre, also depicts an event that is newsworthy -- even as it is alchemized into art. As a result, there is a notable degree to which these pictures "inform the typically omniscient viewpoint with an charge of topicality."

DISTRESSED

Landscapes where water is scarce or forever compromised such as the Salton Sea, the Colorado River Delta, that has not seen a drop of water from that river in over forty years and is now a desert; or Owens Lake, that saw its water diverted to Los Angeles in 1913 and is now a dry, toxic lakebed.

CONTROL

This chapter examines large-scale incursions imposed upon the earth to harness and divert the power of water; from the ancient Stepwells of India, to the modern canals that feed precious water to millions in California and gigantic hydroelectric dam projects of China.

AGRICULTURE

Agriculture represents -- by far -- the largest human activity upon the planet. Approximately seventy percent of all fresh water under our control is dedicated to this activity.

AQUACULTURE

Aquaculture provides a glimpse into this quickly growing and increasingly important food source. Aquaculture looks as those places where land and sea is been shaped to serve the purposes of growing and harvesting water-based crops such as salt, fish, shrimp, seaweed and rice.

WATERFRONT

Waterfront looks at the way we shape land to create manufactured waterfront properties and speaks about the human need and desire to be near water -- even if it is artificial. Burtynsky also takes us to India, to witness the largest pilgrimage on the planet with 35 million people arriving to bathe in the Ganges to release them of their sins -- an ancient spiritual belief in the cleansing power and sacredness of water.

SOURCE

Source comes from Burtynsky's journey to British Columbia and Iceland, places where a critical stage in the hydrological cycle takes place: the mountains, containing glaciers and snow. They are the first landscapes in over thirty years Burtynsky took focussing specifically on pristine wilderness, instead of the imposition of human systems upon it.


BackBack to Photo Corners