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Edward Burtynsky's monumental chronicle of the human impact on the planet
Edward Burtynsky’s monumental chronicle of the human impact on the planet.
Or “Quarry #1,” a 2016 study of the Italian mountainsides where Carrara marble is extracted—it’s a masterpiece of geometry and brooding color that reminds me of Bruegel’s great “Tower of Babel.” But it’s “Dry Tailings #1,” from another copper mine, this one in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which really establishes the dilemma of our age. What at first seems to be undifferentiated rubble are actually piles of bricks, carefully numbered so that their owners can be compensated; in the background, a roving troop of boys follow leaders hoisting brightly colored flags as they scavenge for wood that might someday float up and damage the turbines; their bonfires brush smoke across this battlefield scene. And the thrill of that motion comes through in a particularly striking photo, “Talladega Speedway #1,” which captures the 2009 running of Alabama’s greatest stock-car race before a crowd of eighty thousand people—Burtynsky’s image is so sharp that you feel like you can make out each one of them, standing at attention as the national anthem plays, a tractor-trailer carries the flag around the track, and a squad of military jets flies overhead.
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