Inspired by a Master: Edward Burtynsky

January 19, 2012

a couple years ago I was walking around Chelsea, looking at the galleries, and when ever i am in that area I have to go to the Hasted-Kraeutler gallery. When I walked in the gallery they were showing Edward Burtynsky‘s Quarry work. Burtynsky is a Canadian born Photographer that focuses on human manufactured landscapes. The prints the gallery was showing were printed pretty large maybe about 4 or 5 feet tall. I was really taken back by the photos, I think it is one of the first times I have been really impressed with abstract photography, and a perfect example of it. The First image in this post is one of my favorites and I belive was the first one I saw. What I loved is at first it didn’t look like a photo, but even when you realize it is a photo the key is becomes about the shapes and patterns because the subject is almost taken out of the visual discussion. Burtynsky achieves this in a lot of images be shooting in an almost birds eye view so even when there are recognizable thing like heavy machinery, it doesn’t register as that right away because your seeing from an uncommon view. The other thing that really plays to his advantage is (at least in this quarry series) is that he almost flattens the scene he is shooting. The adjustable of depth in the picture is due to Burtynsky 4×5 field camera, a tool not often used today. Burtynsky really came on the radar just a little more than a year ago with the release of his book “OIL” which won a number of awards as a photo book.

His collection of work really inspired me to explore abstraction in photography, but the hard question is what can i use as a subject that was prevalent but that I could also use in a why that it would register beyond its subject matter. Walking around I found my self looking up a lot and even the people on the street are always shooting up towards a building roof and I always turn to see what they see in this tower of concrete that couldn’t possibly fit in the frame. But as I started looking up I realized it did have to all fit in frame in fact it would be good if it didn’t fit in frame because then I could use just part of it. I started shooting the building but adjusting my angle to try to crop out sections of buildings and sky in my viewer so hopefully the images become more about the relation of positive and negative space and the pattern and use of lines in the structures

Below is an photo I took from the same night and area as the last post I did. I really love the contrast in this shot between the buildings and the sky. One of the interesting things is its a night photo and the sky is almost white and the building are almost black. Having that very direct divide between the too really allowed to split the frame up using the surrounding buildings.