Burtynsky

[Paddy Quinn]

So many people seem to be falling over themselves to say that Burtynsky is the best thing since marmite on toast, it's worth reading that Times article (extracted):

Edward Burtynsky, the Canadian photographer whose large, sumptuous and numbingly clichéd color pictures are in a big exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, specializes in a familiar genre that historians have called "the industrial sublime." ....... he frames the subject so that it not only fills the entire picture but also, you can't help imagining, extends almost infinitely in every direction.

The effect is disorienting, awesome and alarming. The extremely detailed images often look like scenes in a Hollywood thriller. But Mr. Burtynsky has more high-minded motives. He wants to show people how human activities have altered, for better or worse, our experience of the earth's natural topography. ....

One of the problems with Mr. Burtynsky's photography is that he uses the same pumped-up pictorial rhetoric of shock and awe in almost every one of the more than 60 works on view. This produces a monotonous effect and, what's worse, a loss of representational credibility. By applying the same compositional formula to every subject, from California tire dumps to new buildings in China, Mr. Burtynsky hammers away at the idea of the global proliferation of industrial production, destruction and waste. But he leaves out a lot of information, too.

....making bad things appear visually seductive and good things look scary is one of photography's oldest tricks....

Some visitors may observe parallels between Mr. Burtynsky's work and the photographic catalogs of industrial structures by the Germans Bernd and Hilla Becher and the photographs of spectacular modern subjects like rock concerts and big box stores by Andreas Gursky. The works of the New Topographers, like Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz and Frank Gohlke, who with almost scientific objectivity have documented the effects of human activities on landscapes of the American West, also come to mind.

The difference between the works of those artists and Mr. Burtynsky's is that they mostly avoided conventionally picturesque approaches to their subject matter. Mr. Burtynsky's photographic vision is closer to that of National Geographic magazine. Though technically impressive and, because of its scale, important-seeming, it offers nothing about photography or about the world that we have not already seen in the works of countless other proficient, globe-trotting photojournalists whose names have faded into the oblivion of artistic mediocrity...

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/arts/design/28john.html?ex=1137128400&en=3d07cb505b430915&ei=5070

[Paul Kierstead]

Don't care for Marmite.

And I think it is worth seeing and judging for oneself if possible. The Times is hardly infallible, though I do value their opinion.

[paulr]

It's one reviewer's opinion, not the whole Times ...

I do tend to agree with the reviewer, but as Tim said, I might not have said it so strongly. I can see these pictures having a lot more impact for anyone who hasn't spent a lot of time looking at similar work that came before it. If you have looked a lot at struth and gursky, and the new topographics guys before them, you might find yourself wondering what Burtinsky's work has to add to the mix.

Even beyond that, one nail the reviewer hits on the head is the question of point of view. Burtynsky seems to have an agenda, but can't seem to make up it's mind what it is. He seems to be showing us evidence of the dark side of industry (as have a million others before him), but without much regard for what he's actually looking at. Like compacted metal at a recycling plant ... what does the artist feel about it? The same thing he feels about the strip mines or open dumps that he photographs in exactly the same manner?

i don't have any fundamental problem with the idea of "estheticizing evil," as some critics have called the phenomenon. i think finding form is an essential way for us to find understanding and even complicity in a horror that we bear witness to as an artist. but there's a difference between finding form as a part of finding deeper understanding, and finding form as a kind of habitual prettifying ... an activity that can be seen as a distraction from real understanding.

[Frank Petronio]

I used to do corporate annual reports in the late 1980s - early 1990s. He would make a great AR photographer for a resource industry or Bechtel, Halliburton, etc.

But the big corporations and design firms aren't so extravagant with their assignments anymore so I'm glad he found a profitable gig in the art world.

If you want to see some nice quarry photos check out mine, which predate his ;-) Everytime I visit the Eastman House I am confronted with his duplicate shot of a quarry wall (it such an obvious photo that thousands have probably done it before). I think that is my problem with his work - it is the obvious shot, the first take - every shot. Given his significant funds and access, where is his thoughtful photo process?

Other than being able to afford to travel and make really big, high quality prints, where's the beef? It's no different than hundreds of other MFA shows...

[tim atherton]

"I can see these pictures having a lot more impact for anyone who hasn't spent a lot of time looking at similar work that came before it. If you have looked a lot at struth and gursky, and the new topographics guys before them, you might find yourself wondering what Burtinsky's work has to add to the mix. "

That's an aspect I hadn't really considered. The show was at the Edmonton Art Gallery - which has a collection of about 40+ images I think that made up the exhibit. I'd say that for the majority of people coming to see the work looking at these kind of big colour photographs is a fairly new experience. While I'm coming to it having spent many years looking at Gursky, Struth, Esser, Eggleston, Misrach, Behan/McPhee, Southam, Shore, Sternfeld etc - as well as the B&W "guys" - Adams (R), Gowin, James, Baltz, The Bechers, Nick Nixon, Basilico and so on. and in Franks words "Other than being able to afford to travel and make really big, high quality prints, where's the beef?" - like a lot of Canadian stuff (but not all) it's second string at best

(we have and celebrate Can Lit - which is all very nice and well, but with a few exceptions no one else has ever heard of these "Great Canadian Writers"... same in music etc - though when we are good, we are very very good - Mr. L Cohen, Michael Ondaatje, Joni Mitchell, McLuhan, Glenn Gould - and never forget William Shatner :-) No I know I'm going to get stomped on by the Great Beaver of Canadian Wrath

"It's no different than hundreds of other MFA shows..." and not as good as some - just better financed

[paulr]

I think you guys have an amazing number of great musicians relative to Canada's size (that list you just posted is what, like 5% of Canada's population? .... kind of like Ireland and writers.

[Paul Kierstead]

If its not the best-of-all-time-catagory, its crap seems the be the message I get here. OK.

I don't pay attention to the art world at all. I go to galleries and museums regularly and enjoy it (or hate it, or be indifferent to it...) . I never heard of Burtynsky until I seen his exhibition. I think perhaps a lot of you have been turned off by some hype or something, I don't know, but it has to be something; otherwise, he wouldn't be worth the effort of writing a negative review. So I suspect there is some subtext I am not getting here. I also generally don't read what the pictures are 'about' before seeing them; I have found it heavily colors my vision, often for the worse. Quite frankly I don't give a shit if the artist accomplished what he set out to do, I care if it does something for the view, possibly in spite of the artists intentions.

Frank, I think you are blinded by your own 'involvement' here. Outside of sharing the same subject matter, your shots are not remotely like his. Yours are interesting in their own right, but very different; his are quite formal and cold, yours are less formal and more about the quarry then his are.

And tim, you are unduly harsh. Do you only read first-string authors? God, that has to be boring.

[paulr]

I don't think anyone's saying his work is crap. But it's fighting for attention in an arena that's very crowded right now ... and one that has extremely high standards. We're wondering what his work has to offer in that context.

[tim atherton]

Paul K, the use of the term "cliched" in the first line of the NY Times review initially came across as somewhat harsh to me. But the more I consider it, the more accurate it seems. The work is quite obviously trying to do what so many have done before (and Burtynsky and his curators firmly set his work in the new colour/new topographics tradition among others) - but he doesn't seem to be doing it any better than anyone else has (indeed - is probably not doing as well as many of the up and coming second and even third generation Dusseldorfers), nor taking it in a new direction.

Hence the "wondering what Burtinsky's work has to add to the mix. " or "where's the beef?" comments - the work is makes claims to belong to certain bodies of photography, but it doesn't stand scrutiny when placed alongside them by comparison. Certainly not on a consistent basis.

For one example, I would really compare Burtynskys work with that of photographers at a similar point in their working/artistic careers like Jem Southam or Jim Cooke (or even the somewhat younger Elger Esser). To me Burtynsky comes across as bland and - yes - cliched, by comparison

The the National Geographic comparison is entirely appropriate, where month after month you can see very well produced, technically proficient but ultimately disposable (store it in a big pile in the basement) photographs - and lets move on to see what nice colourful treats there are next month.

"Do you only read first-string authors? God, that has to be boring." Of course I didn't say that - I read many authors - but these days I try not to make (or believe) claims that this weeks latest hyped-up author out of Toronto/Vancouver/NY is the next Garcia Marquez or Kundera or Calvino or Sebald. Occasionally they are - most often they aren't.

What is boring is reading what turns out to be another yet poorly written third or fourth rate novel that got a good review.

I'll see what happens if I have the chance to ask Burtynsky next week

[Frank Petronio]

I only bring up my work out of jealousy and coincidence. In spite of my nit-picking, my hat's off to the guy for being so ambitious and hard core. It takes a lot of self-promotion and confidence to put yourself out there so I can tear it apart when I haven't done a fraction of his work.

But... if we are being critical of the entire genre of New Color/New Topographics (now thirty years old...) then his works seems to follow the path created by others. And Gary Gladstone's annual reports of the mid-1980s....

What about Chris Jordan's work? Large color in the same genre - by all accounts Chris is a great guy and hard worker - but couldn't you apply the same criticisisms to his work as Burtynsky's?