Artist’s photographs chronicle changing landscape

Edward Burtynsky’s massive landscape photos of industrial subjects have the scale and gloss of a megabudget Hollywood techno-thriller, but escapism is the furthest thing from the artist’s mind. He illuminates places and processes that some of us may never think about, but that are fundamental to our survival as a society dependent upon machines. Dependent, specifically, on the blood that makes them run — oil. Oil is the title and the subject of Burtynsky’s current collection of 55 landscapes on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. (An accompanying book expands the selection of photos to more than 90.) The product of a decade’s work, these pictures take us through the life span of this precious, finite energy source, showing us the derricks that extract it from the Earth, the refineries that prepare it for our use and the tangled knots of superhighways on which our cars consume it.

Paul Roth, the Corcoran’s senior curator of photography and media arts, worked closely with Burtynsky to develop the exhibit and book simultaneously, traveling to the artist’s studio in Toronto every few weeks over a period of several months.

The Corcoran initially contacted Burtynsky to contribute to its 2007 Ansel Adams exhibit, seeking the perspective of a contemporary landscape photographer on Adams’ work. It was a happy collaboration, Roth says, and when the Burtynsky told the museum he wanted to make oil the theme of his next major project, the Corcoran offered itself up as the premiere venue, from which the show will move on to Canada and Europe. Having a show about what is at least arguably the world’s most contentious substance debut in Washington, D.C., nerve center of the most powerful nation on the planet, just made sense.

“It’s a topic that a lot of people will want to see through a political lens,” Roth says. “You can run away from that, you can embrace it. I think in Washington, to embrace it is best. To be able to think about a topic of international importance through the eyes of a great artist is something that museums in Washington can do if they choose to do it. There’s an audience here for that.”

Burtynsky was the subject of a 2006 feature documentary, “Manufactured Landscapes.” He made several trips to China to document the construction of the world’s largest power plant, the Three Gorges Dam, which was principally completed in 2006.

“Ed does not see himself as a political crusader at all,” Roth says. “He’s an artist. He’s not trying to promote a point of view, but what he’s interested in is loaded. He’s interested in the alteration of our habitat, and our visual environment, by large-scale manufacturing.”

Actually, substituting the term “visual environment” for “photograph” offers a more telling description of the product of Burtynsky’s labors. His eagle-eyed panoramas are as sensuous as they are intellectually rigorous.