Edward Burtynsky:
The China Series

Aug. 24 – Oct. 8, 2007

Organized by SECCA, Winston-Salem, NC

Over the past twenty-five years, the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has been an explorer of unfamiliar places where industrial activity has reshaped the surface of the land. His surveys of the man-made terrain of quarrying, mining, railcutting, recycling, oil refining, and shipbreaking remind us that these incursions into the earth arise from perennial human needs and desires. With a disturbing and unexpected beauty, these photographs subvert our usual notions of the sublime in nature and lead us to new awareness of the landscape of our times.

For this exhibition, Burtynsky exhibited 20 works that includes images from his most recent trip and images from the controversial Three Gorges Dam Project, by far the world's most extravagant and environmentally-altering hydro-electric engineering feat. The dam project (the largest engineering feat in mankind's history) has been planned since 1917 and officially began in 1994. With 60,000 workers involved, China is right on time to complete the project in 2009. While the new hydro-electric power produced by the dam will supplant the fossil fuels that the area is now burning, the floor created by the dam will fill a series of coal mines will water that will release some very toxic materials into the environment.

According to the artist, "These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times."