World-renowned, Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky premiered his newest exhibit, Oil, on Oct. 3 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The exhibit, which features 56 large-scale color landscape photographs, debuted less than one block from the White House where Congress is struggling with a climate bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions. The images, divided into distinct themes, together present the unseen story behind the extraction, production, and consumption of crude oil.
The narrative begins with aerial photographs depicting scenes from the oil fields of California and Texas to the sprawling concrete landscapes and twisted metal refineries of New Brunswick. The second gallery, “Transportation and Motor Culture,” highlights the dark realities of a culture negligently dependent on oil. Shots of gigantic mountains of abandoned tires overflowing in landfills and immense airplane graveyards allude to the mounting consequences of unrestrained oil consumption. The third and final gallery begins in the aftermath of oil exploitation. In one image, barefoot workers in Bangladesh struggle with the dangerous task of stripping down retired oil tankers that have been discarded in the sludge, while a picture of the abandoned oil fields of Azerbaijan, where the earth has been sucked dry, captures the closing theme of the exhibit, the impending end of oil.
The collection of images, which Burtynsky compiled over a period of 12 years, exposes the face of an industry that manages to remain conveniently out of sight and out of mind to the public. His exhibit comes at a time when global awareness of oil consumption is of increasingly dire importance. The exhibit will be at the Corcoran Gallery through December 13.
Edward Burtynsky received international acclaim for his award winning documentary Manufactured Landscapes in 2006. His photographs of global industrial landscapes can be found in the collections of museums around the world, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum in New York.
