Responses to the film by Ed Burtynsky
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Art & Design Perspectives III, School of Art & Design, University of Michigan
Weekly Statement #7:
ReplyDeleteI have watched this video in a class a couple years ago, but I don’t remember being as affected. This may be because my professor prefaced the film with “look how beautiful all his photos are, how does he use he make an atypical landscape appealing”, so I was concentrating more on the formal aspects of his work, but disengaged from the subject. Watching the film again (on the big screen no less), had an entirely different impact. It may have been the scale of the viewing, but the vast expanses of land laid to waste by manufacturing blew me away. I was shocked to discover that his photographs of compressed oil drum barrels were exactly replicated in the beginning of the movie Wall-e. If you haven’t seen the movie (see it!), the main character’s job is to take garbage, and compress it into neat cubes that look exactly like the compressed oil barrels in Burtynsky’s work. Here I thought that the movie was a post-apocalyptic fantasy, but the imagery was drawn from how places in our world actually look. That realization, coupled with a feeling bordering on horror, made me wonder how many people are actually aware of these places. I didn’t even know about Burtynsky until coming to A&D, but his work makes the issues we have been discussing about consumption exceptionally clear. I feel like everyone should see these images, they show the consequences of our lifestyles in a way that dry facts cannot. I feel like if enough people saw this, maybe enough people in positions of power, we might be on the way to making radical change.
While I was in the Library looking for sources for my “My Stuff” project, I came across a book called “Shopping Our Way to Safety” by Andrew Szasz. His basic argument is that Americans, when faced with crisis, put ourselves into “inverted quarantine”, meaning that we attempt to shield ourselves from the perceived dangers in the world around us. His claim is that this is why so many people buy bottled water (perceived pollutants in tap water), and buy organic food (perceived contaminants in traditional agriculture). Whether or not you agree with that argument, the idea he posed at the end of the book was interesting. He states that if we place ourselves in an inverted quarantine, in effect placing a personal barrier between a danger, and ourselves we are less likely to want to fix the problem posing the threat in the first place. Applied to what we have been discussing, this would imply that simply buying products that support environmentally responsible production is not enough, even on a large scale. Basically, changes in personal choice alone won’t eradicate any problems, since many are in a position where they either can’t or won’t make the choice. We have to actually work actively to solve the problems, whether through pressuring government, companies, or both.
Normally, I’d be the person to refute that argument, saying that if the “green” trend continues, businesses will have to start changing practices in order to satisfy what the consumer desires. However, in light of the images presented in the Burtynsky film, I have to wonder if Szasz is right and that really isn’t enough. If we are already so far gone, that the only way to be proactive is to make radical changes in a top-down approach to the way that we do business. In our freedom-loving society, I’d like people to have freedom to do business however they see fit, and assume they make responsible choices. This rarely seems to be the case, and it may be time that we give up our ideals of individualism, for the sake of everyone who shares this planet.
I’m only left to wonder how this could be done.
Shaili Das
ReplyDeleteWeekly Response #8
Edward Burtynsky’s film Manufacturing Landscapes seemed very interesting to me. I saw this film last year in my CFC class and since then I have become a big fan of his work. When I first saw this video it was so overwhelming that some of it didn’t even sink in. it was after I watched it on such a huge screen, which really helped convey the vast “landscapes” so to say that were created by all our by products.
His images are visually appealing but also convey a very strong message. They seem to be eye openers for the most part. Specifically the images in china and the industrialization images really impacted me. The images of just people sitting in rows doing the same monotonous work for days on end was clearly captured in the image and made the viewer feel for them. Even the idea of them dressing the same way, doing the same job, eating the same food, made it seem like these people were no longer people but instead they just represented machine parts. It also showed that these factory workers had no personal identity/ self-expression. Burtynsky’s conveyed all these complex ideas with his photographs while still keeping the viewer’s attention on the contours that look aesthetically beautiful of such a sad situation. His use of irony works really well in his work and makes each of his pieces strong enough to stand.
To me, his job seems very interesting yet at the same time horrifying. He gets to see these things take place first hand and is responsible to show them to the world and open people’s eyes which he is very successful at, however, I personally don't think I can see all this and be able to document it. All I can imagine is that if these images disturb us now, and we didn’t even see it first hand, imagine the impact it has on Brytnsky.
Lastly, I also found it interesting how in certain places they didn’t let Burtynsky’s film certain things. This shows that there is definitely animosity towards him from certain people because he is revealing the truth. I truly respect that he can stand against these people in order show us what is happening “behind the scenes” in many of these 3rd world nations that claim to be prospering and having an improvement in lifestyle.
Whenever my family would drive by an industrialized area, my mother would always comment how beautiful the structures look. She saw it as a form of art, finding beauty in the corroded metal and the dull colors of the structures that rose into the skyline. She realized it was a completely different beauty than nature, but a man made beauty all the same. I had to agree there was something impressive and astonishing about these industrialized horizons, but I found them nothing special when I was younger. However, over the years I have to come see some of that beauty but it was the most exemplified in the film by Ed Burtynsky. Never has the industrialized landscape looked so powerful, beautiful, foreboding, and unknown.
ReplyDeleteThe images of abandoned freight ships are startling to look at especially when they are not in water. The size of them compared to a human being is beyond massive. It is almost unbelievable that humans are able to build such monstrous sized objects. There is an ironic progression in the movie how Burtynsky shows the building of these huge ships in China suddenly turns to the filming of their dismantling in Pakistan or India. I would have never though that freight ships eventually go out of use and are dismantled by the poverty of India for salvaging. It is enlightening in showing the conditions that these people work and live in.
I think Burtynsky did a wonderful job of combining information with art through film and photograph. He is able to find the beauty amongst the destruction and industrialization while at the same educating the western civilization about the far corners of the earth that take care of our consumption and waste. We are so unaware of this process and what is actually going on in our world that this documentary comes as an awe to all as art and information. It is usually hard to combine both, but Burtynsky did so seamlessly in an arresting manner. He deserves much credit for that. Most documentaries are dry and not as captivating, but his images lure you in whilst the information is presented.
I wish I could have seen more than the hours worth of the movie since it was very eye-opening and beautiful as well.