I managed to get to see this exhibition with just a few days remaining. It was spread across the 4^th and 5^th floors of the Photographers Gallery. On entering the 4^th floor after ascending the staircase one was met with a relatively dark environment with focussed lighting illuminating, in the main, 5 foot by 4 foot black framed images. The 5^th floor with higher ceiling leant a certain majesty to the images presented there as opposed to the constrained and rather crushing atmosphere of the 4^th floor.

Most of the images I had seen before in either publications or on-line but I was unprepared for the sheer scale and proportion of the images on display. Printed copy or screen copy does no justice to the quality and power of these images.

The scale of the issue that Burtynsky is addressing is our whole life cycle dependency upon the use of oil and the associated industries in extraction, production and cessation of dependent products.

Some of the images are very much abstract in nature such as Oxford Tire pile and Densified oil filters but on close inspection hold tremendous detail of the discarded end products that were reliant on oil for manufacture or used oil as their primary engineered function. These images were devoid of obvious human content, but heavy with trace.

These were very much different to the rather biblical depiction of the scrapyards at Chittagong where huge almost cathedral like steel structures lay beached whilst masses of tiny ill clad and ill protected people set about disaggregating them into manageable component parts. The time of day is used powerfully in these shoots as the setting sun is pictured very low in the sky and enhances both the size and colour of the rotting hulks and the diminutiveness of the human workforce. One particularly powerful image was that of a solitary worker leaning on two tools in front of a huge section of hull. In many respects this image was a poetic rather than critical view of the industry.

Another of the Chittagong images showed the juxtaposition of human survival versus the accidentally introduced shipbreaking business. On very close inspection, i.e. using a viewing distance equivalent to an average nose length, small images of people working in paddy fields beyond the yard show just how close a source of food is to a highly contaminated environment.

In most, if not all of these images, Burtynsky’s viewpoint is elevated and pointing downwards providing immense depth of field. In some respects these are very much like some of Salgado’s works.

The Chittagong images were the more powerful for me in that the fragile co-existence between discarded oil carriers and oil-using carriers was displayed in an almost biblical manner.

The other images comprising of discarded war machinery Sikorsky Helicopters and the VW storage lot and the transport infrastructure all used the a high vantage point and extreme depth of field enabling the viewer to take in the scale of the images whilst being able to get in really close to pick out movement and human activity within them.

Less obvious and almost neutrally presented were the exploration at sea and Gulf of Mexico pipeline images. In some respects the absence of human beings and activity, other that the fire fighting image made them more sinister but that sense was only felt after the initial view which was more a case of creative significance with just a hint of scarring that had to be read from within the images.

In a word this exhibition was awesome.