Canadian Photographer Edward Burtynsky has traveled the world to try and answer that issue. His photographic work brings a great variety of images that begin to answer this issue. His work includes quarries, mines, railway cuts, ship yards, oil fields, refineries, vast waste yards and the three gorges dam project in China. The diverse subject matter brings light to the bigger picture and not just on a single issue.
His work along the Yangtze River in Hubei province China shows our increasing desire for more to the point that the Chinese government destroyed 11 cities and displaced 1.2 million people to provide for the growing demand of electricity and control of the river. His photographs of the Yangtze show the waste and destruction of materials and cities that now sit buried under the river. After seeing these I realized for the first time after flooding eleven cities, new cities with homes, roads, offices, utilities, sidewalks and more have to be rebuilt using most likely new raw material which only damages more of our earth.
Burtynsky work also looks at other alterations such as a vast field of rubber tires that are sitting, breaking down into harmful chemicals in California or the removal of stone from the vast amount of quarries across the globe. Every building and road that is built more and more of this stone is removed leaving enormous scars on the landscape and essentially unusable land. When you see the big picture it is all connected and the footprint is growing and changing constantly for the worse.
His beautiful and often startling work shows the true nature of our growing demand and what it truly costs us.
The TED award was given to Burtynsky in 2005 to recognize his work revealing mankind’s impact on the environment. This award helped add financial support to www.worldchanging .com and other endeavors that can be seen on the TED website.
No Comments, Comment or Ping
Reply to “Edward Burtynsky”