Image above: Lake Baikal is the most voluminous freshwater lake in the world with roughly 20 percent of the world's surface fresh water (Wikipedia). Photo by David Lang from (http://www.daniel-lang.com/journal/2007_08_01_archive.html)
By Murray Whyte on 23 February 2010 in the Star -
(http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/769872--edward-burtynsky-takes-aim-at-bigger-picture)
For more than two decades, Toronto artist Edward Burtynsky has been making large-scale photographs of scenes of humankind's staggering ability to bend the natural landscape to its will. From freight trains slicing through sheer mountain faces to rivers of molten slag in Northern Ontario to the oil-saturated beaches of the Chittagong Delta in Bangladesh, where decommissioned oil tankers are broken down for scrap, Burtynsky has captured the startling scale of humanity's viral invasion of the planet – one that has only accelerated since his work began.
Most recently, Burtynsky mounted a show of work specific to the oil industry: both its environmental ravages and its globe-spanning influence. He's currently at work on another long-term project about something more elemental: water, both its absence and its absolute necessity.
Q: In the past, your work with heavy industry hasn't necessarily been topical – railways, mining, ship-breaking all operate at an astonishing scale but aren't necessarily front-of-mind issues. With oil, and now water, you've turned to some real hot-button subjects.
A: I think, as I'm progressing through this train of thought, which started 30 years ago, the next logical step for me as an artist – this is where it was pointing to. Mining, resource extraction – those are big issues. I think when we're engaged with transforming a landscape for our own use, it always raises a lot of questions because of the scale at which we engage.
But here, with the water issue, the difference is that there's a water crisis brewing. You can talk about climate change or peak oil; either one of these can bring on seismic changes in our society. But water has the most potential for dramatic, immediate impact. For instance, when water's not there, there's not a lot of time. Within days, cities collapse, society starts to unravel.
Q: With this kind of urgency, it would be easy for the work to come across as alarmist. But you've always taken a distant perspective – standing far back and letting the images tell their own story.
A: Sure. My work has always been a journey of learning, trying to understand our world and where the thresholds are: how we're using the planet and where we're coming close to the edge.
That's been the undercurrent, without the work being didactic, but trying to hover within that zone of contemplation.
Q: In a way, with oil and now water, that allows a deeper kind of contemplation, in that these are the two things that underpin our continued existence on the planet and they're both in crisis.
A: Well, yeah. Only 3 per cent of the world is water and we're using it like drunken sailors. We don't have a system as beautiful and efficient as the hydrological system, where evaporation from the oceans can be taken into the clouds and drop fresh water onto our land.
We've taken for granted that this is an infinite cycle – we're always going to have this, refreshing our land, our lakes and rivers. We're quickly finding out that this is not the case.
Q: So is this a departure from your previous priorities, of industrial consequences, to something more elemental?
A: Not necessarily. I'm not just trying to paint this bigger picture of humans and water.
One of the chapters I'm working on is how human beings control water, because if you can do that, ultimately, that's at the core of political power and you can control society.
If you don't have water, you don't have food – it's at the base of the hierarchy – if you don't have basic needs dealt with then you have no control. You have people who are ecological refugees, immediately.
It could get very ugly as people are literally trying to land on the shores of a country where they see hope of solving their problems. And I believe we'll be seeing this sort of thing in my lifetime.
Q: So this is really the undercurrent: political power and control.
A: Absolutely. And that has made for some very short-term thinking. In the Southwestern U.S., the biggest aquifer in North America has been feeding the corn boom, and they're literally draining it dry. It would be like if you were given a lake that spanned seven states, and put a straw in it and sucked it dry. It would be like draining Lake Superior.
When you hit the bottom, that's it; there's no rain there. This has huge implications, at least initially, for the economy down there. You won't be selling retirement condos in Arizona and California if you tell them there's only 10 years of water left.
Q: So what happens?
A: That's where it gets interesting. There will be a howl that will ring across the world, especially from the wealthy, towards every political force there is. They'll be looking at anything – the Great Lakes, anything – to save this investment.
Video above: Edward Burtynsky, TED prize talk on sustainability and photography (http://vodpod.com/watch/1472761-edward-burtynsky-ted-prize-talk-on-sustainability-and-photography)
See also: Ea O Ka Aina: Photographs of Oil 11/1/09
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