MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES
Images of Industry: Beautiful Chaos, Disturbing Order
The Popcorn Reel Movie Review: "Manufactured Landscapes"
By Omar P.L. Moore/July 20, 2007
Edward Burtynsky's "Manufacturing #17", Deda Chicken Processing Plant,
Dehui City, Jilin Province, 2005. Mr. Burtynsky's photo appears in
Jennifer Baichwal's documentary "Manufactured Landscapes", released in the U.S.
by Zeitgeist Films. The documentary opened today in the California cities
of Berkeley, Larkspur and San Francisco, and continues to other U.S. cities.
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A literal discourse through the lens of Canadian photographer
Edward Burtynsky reveals much more than meets the eye and the mind in Jennifer
Baichwal's "Manufactured Landscapes", an cavalcade of order and choreography,
which is occasionally mildly disturbing, not because Mr. Burtynsky repeatedly
declares that he isn't making a judgment about what he camera captures -- of
course, that within itself is an inherent judgment -- but because the imagery,
whether by choice or otherwise, is so uniform and regimented, as if to be
inherently fascistic in some way.
Perhaps that is a tribute to the amazing palettes of color and light of Mr.
Burtynsky's work that blend on the screen to transmit visions of such power and
beauty that they can become overwhelming or even scary. The bright yellow
lab coats of the factory workers in China. The billions of pieces of metal
in a scrap yard. Even the stratified and rigid stillness of skyscrapers,
upright standing at attention to form a skyline.
"Our corporate goal is to be exceptional. Professionalism is our
principle", says a factory worker. When she says this it feels like a
fascist mantra, not by itself, but when heard amidst the backdrop of Mr.
Burtynsky's astonishing imagery, which is inevitably symmetrical and uniform.
The photographer argues that the landscape is always constantly being destroyed
by humans and that he as a recorder of images is just an observer. But
does the image itself blot that landscape? Does the image of the landscape
or the recording of it pollute it in any way? Does the two-dimensional
photo limit the power of what is captured? Mr. Burtynsky's goal was to
observe the detailed way in which every human being affects nature each day in
an industrial way. And he succeeds without a real effort. The people
in China know that the cameras are being on trained on them as they toil away,
and yet when they see them they are hardly concerned. They don't stop to
smile or bare their teeth. We see them at work, and their rhythm and
composure hardly change at all.
Edward Burtynsky's "Nickel Tailings, #34", a photo shot in Sudbury, Ontario
Canada, and featured in Jennifer Baichwal's "Manufactured Landscapes".
Mr. Burtynsky, via filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal's documentary captures
humankind's disruption of nature and the collision of the results of that
process with the designers or manufacturers of it. The title of the
documentary could just as well apply to the photographer who composes the image,
as Mr. Burtysnky does, as the title applies to what is captured by the
photographer's lens. While we witness these beautiful and haunting shots
we are forced to contemplate not just their beauty but also their larger
meaning. Art shapes, moves and provokes, and Mr. Burtynsky achieves this
without having to shoot a picture of an image whose contents are provocative
standing alone (i.e., the picture of a Viet Cong soldier pointing a gun at a
Vietnamese citizen during the Vietnam War, or the image of a man confronting a
tank in Tiananmen Square.)
The film is book-ended by indelible images: the opening six minutes of wordless
moments in an almost unbroken tracking shot, and the closing moments of
incandescence, fading to black.
"Manufactured Landscapes" is as close as it gets to becoming a musical of
pictures without music. Ms. Baichwal's documentary is a symphony without
sound, and although there is some music which is jarring and eerie, it is there
to lend more focus and power to the imagery, as if it needs it. Baichwal
is also mindful of not making Edward Burtynsky a presence who overcomes the
subject matter and material of which he speaks. It would have been an easy
task for any accomplished professional photographer to film landmarks like the
pyramids in North East Africa's Egypt, or the Leaning Tower Of Pisa in Italy, or
the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, but Mr. Burtynsky does something far
more challenging: he rouses life out of the everyday around us, where the
mundane and inanimate come to life in an alarming, thought-provoking and
profoundly powerful way.
"Manufactured Landscapes" is not rated by the Motion Picture Association of
America. The film's duration is one hour and 20 minutes. The film
opens in San Francisco, Berkeley and Larkspur, California today, and opens in
U.S. elsewhere over the next few weeks, while continuing on in New York City.
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