Edward Burtynsky’s impressive book Oil is exquisite with an environmentally difficult narrative portrayed with mesmerizing details in sublimely beautiful photographs. This large scale book is befitting of his use of a large format camera and his even larger scale exhibition prints. The pages almost glow with the deeply saturated colors.

Burtynsky’s Oil trilogy is composed of the industrial production, subsequent consumption and eventually the haunting debris that remains. A similar environmental call to action has recently been featured by photographers Mitch Epstein, Chris Jordan and David Maisel. Burtynsky’s photographs are also captured in a documentary style, although he creates a story that progresses from an aloof and abstract aerial viewpoint, he eventually confronts us with a single person and a face.

The industrial scale of the production of oil is almost overwhelming, a sea of oil derricks, pumps, pipes and buildings and related infrastructure. The aerial viewpoint abstracts the industrial sites to wonderful patterns of marks, lines and masses of color. The presence of mankind is either absent or has been minimized.



When confronting Consumption, the lead-in photographs are similar to the earlier oil production but now with sweeping urban vistas of city skylines, tangled freeway exchanges and a sea of suburban rooftops. There is still a sense of detachment. His perspective then shifts to an elevated middle ground, documenting large groups of individuals participating in motorized events, much like the social events documented by Simon Roberts in We English. It is here that Burtynsky’s ironic vision is subtly revealed, such as capturing a car preparing for the Bonneville Time Trials, decorated by their sponsor, Lucas Oil Products. It is in Consumption that Burtynsky attempts to initiate a personal connection, as there is individual delineation within the larger groups.



In the final chapter, End of Oil, we are confronted with the details of debris and waste, abandoned infrastructure, oil caked and oil soaked, nasty, repulsive, a barren and unusable landscape, a sad and spoiled environment. The viewpoint and framing has become tight, up-close and personal. The vistas now start with the middle ground view of tire heaps, junk cars and aircraft, engine blocks and recycled parts. These are haunting remainders of consumption and oil production. Burtynsky concludes with the breaking of the oil freighters which have outlasted their economic usefulness. He documents those who toil in this dreadful condition, creating individual environmental portraits of the workers and a one on one relationship with an individual, humanizing the story of Oil. —Douglas Stockdale