The Eye: Paul Roth on Edward Burtynsky

Occupation: Senior curator of photography and media arts, Corcoran Gallery of Art

Residence: Adams Morgan

The work: “Oil Fields 19b, Belridge, Calif., USA 2003” by Edward Burtynsky

What I want to tell you about this piece: This is the first picture people will see when they come to the Corcoran exhibition “Edward Burtynsky: Oil.” It is outside the gallery next to the sign announcing the show, and it’s also the cover of the exhibition catalog. This is a panoramic, all-encompassing, sweeping view, which is very typical of Ed’s work. It has a much wider field of view than people normally have. You see a lot of foreground detail, but at the same time, it seems to show everything far into the distance. So it is very precise in showing the place where you would be standing, and yet it also seems to take in an enormous, impossible expanse. Burtynsky’s pictures show places that people don’t really know exist. We all know there are oil fields and oil refineries and processing plants, and enormous industrial and manufacturing installations of all kinds — all over the world. But most of us never see these places. What Burtynsky shows is, first of all, what they look like and, secondly, how complex and all-encompassing they are.

This diptych image accomplishes all of that. Burtynsky shows us a place that we really have never seen before except perhaps in the movies (in fact, this is the same oil field fictionalized in “There Will Be Blood”), and he shows it to us from an elevated vantage point that implies profound insight or privileged knowledge — it makes us feel we’re seeing something we ordinarily wouldn’t have access to. And it shows something extraordinary in great detail — clear, sharp, colorful detail.

This is an absolutely incredible picture on its own. But it is also an emblematic image for what I think is an amazing project about one of the most important subjects of our time.