I've been fascinated for a while by the work of Chris Jordan, an outstanding practitioner of what he calls the "photographic arts." While his photos of the destruction of Katrina are arresting, it's his photos and montages of the piles of detrius we leave behind that are most compelling. You'll find dizzying piles of cell phone chargers, cans, crushed cars, almost everything we make, use, and lose. What seems to unite Jordan's work is his desperate attempt to provide a sense of scale. That, and provide some color stunning enough for Matisse.
Jordan's work finds an ally in the new Canadian documentary, Manufactured Landscapes. I just finished watching this outstanding film -- it follows Edward Burtynsky , who (the press release tells me) is "internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of nature transformed by industry." Yes, I guess, and deservedly so -- this film follows him on location through India, China, and Pennsylvania, setting up his mesmerizing shots of impossibly large and polluted man-made places, whole climates and landscapes created by men. He reminds us, just as Chris Jordan does, that a man-made skyline is a very new thing on the earth.
The shots of the shipyards in India are breathtaking, the long rows of great container ships taking shape in the fog. The film focuses on China, and as my copy didn't include subtitles when they interview locals, I had to squint and strain my ears to try and follow -- my rusty Chinese was hardly up to the task. Another thing I'd forgotten was just how sprawled and sordid that country can be -- something the long, panning shots of factories, cities, and factory cities remedied.
