Burtynsky Oil

Edward Burtynsky's Oil collects a decades' worth of photographing the world's largest oil fields, refineries, freeway interchanges and automobile plants, in an attempt to comprehend the scale of production attending this most politicized of resources. The ideal photographer for this job, Burtynsky locates and documents the sites that urban dwellers never see, and questions human accountability. His imagery is vast in both scale and ambition, revealing the apparatus behind the energy we mine from dwindling resources, and the ongoing effects of the industrial revolution. "In 1997 I had what I refer to as my oil epiphany," Burtynsky explains: "it occurred to me that all the vast, man-altered landscapes I had been in pursuit of for over 20 years were all possible because of the discovery of oil and the mechanical advantage of the internal combustion engine." Burtynsky's epiphany is typical of his desire to lift the scrim of everyday life and reveal the basic resources that keep it in place. What lies beyond is not pretty, and the images in Oil sometimes resemble the post-apocalyptic desert landscapes of Mad Max, with their vast horizons of featureless sand and desert foliage, punctuated by creaky-looking oil machinery. With a unflinching eye, Burtynsky presents us with the reality of oil production as its role in our civilization undergoes massive transformation.