"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. "
I'd certainly have to agree - he has worked extremely hard at and succeeded at making a name for himself. Which - like it or not - is what it takes....
"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 criticisms to his work as Burtynsky's?"
Roundabout answer... I have almost exactly the same problem with Burtynsky's fellow Canadian Polidori - though I find Polidori less ambiguous. Although he has flirted with the art world and done some nice books - in reality he is still an architectural/editorial photographer at heart - albeit one who has poked the boundaries a bit by incorporating some of the new color/topographics/Dusselforf School stuff into his commercial and editorial work.
Anyway - after seeing a post on here I looked at the recent New Yorker with Polidori's images from New Orleans - and I had the same " it doesn't quite grab me and I can't quite put my finger on why" response as I did to the Burtynsky show. Now, when I read you post I took a quick check in to Chris's site to remind myself of some of his images - and there was his work from N.O. (which he has talked of briefly on here). Again, it's really hard for me to quite say why, but Chris's stuff just - of the self-same subjects - just catches me in a way Polidori's didn't. It's subtle, and they are playing with the same paintbox but for me there is something there in Chris's work that isn't in Polidori's (one - but only one thing - I think Chris is much less ambiguous about what he's doing and why he's doing it than both Burtynsky and Polidori - he is both saying "hey - we produce all this crap really sucks - whether you agree with that or not :-) - but he also says - wow - cool - when I saw all this it was just asking to be photographed and I really get excited about how it all "looks" - about how great a photograph it makes - and he is apologetic about neither).
Finally I looked at Chris's other work which I know quite well - and for most of it - even when it's things he's photogrpahing that Burtynsky might have already covered - again, I usually find just a subtle something there that is lacking for me in Burtynsky. it's really hard to place - but after looking at a whole series of Chris's work I just come away in the end going - yeah...
And Chris still very much plays with colour and form and scale - especially with stuff in amongst the "ugly" - but I do find (or more feel) something else there too.
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