Edward Burtynsky's Manufactured Landscapes: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Creating Moving Still Images and Stilling Moving Images of Ecological Disasters

摘要

This paper analyzes the complex relationship between photography and film in the documentary "Manufactured Landscapes," a film about the work of Edward Burtynsky: beautiful, painterly, large format photos of scarred landscapes, dumps and industrial worksites. Combining the format of an artist portrait, showing the photographer at work, with that of a social documentary about the impact of mass industrialization and globalization worldwide, the film has the power to make us look beyond the beauty of his images and see the big picture of the issues at stake: the impact of mass production and mass consumption in which we all take part. The film also forces us to think about the role of the artist in society as either aesthete or truth teller.