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Between Manufacturing and Landscapes: Edward Burtynsky and the Photography of Ecology

Abstract The industrial sublime has become the signature trope of Edward Burtynsky's photographs to such a degree that it makes his images now fairly quick to recognize. This essay begins with a critique of the way the conventions of the sublime frame the photography of nature in favor of awe and anxiety over detail and activism. Burtynsky pushes the environmental image to more complicated ecological stakes by making photographs that question the relation of image to commodity extraction, recycling, and the implication of the mechanics of the photograph in the object it captures. Commodities live complicated lives that pass through matters involving national economies, corporate agendas, labor, environmental stress, and the consumer object—all of which involve aesthetic elements and affect ecological conditions. In such focus on the material and affective life of the commodity, Burtynsky only peripherally involves humans, which gives his work a post-human feel. Another post-human choice in Burtynsky's work involves his increasing use of the aerial shot or the use of a crane or ladder, which aligns the camera with aerial technology from planes to satellites, complex machines that have important and vexed relations to specific environmental conditions. By combining an analysis of manufactured landscapes with manufactured images, this essay considers the problems and positive potentials concerning the role of photography in ecological critique.