Politics and Activism

This past Monday we went to the E-classroom for a library research workshop (our third of the course). It was interesting to learn some more about the library website and searching. Practice will be beneficial as with anything.

We watched the film Manufactured Landscapes by Edward Burtynsky. It was quite an interesting film. I learned a lot about what we are doing to the earth and about China. It was unbelievable to me some of the pictures that he took of workers, etc. there.

When watching the film I also considered the focus questions that were handed out in class. The first one asked about the techniques used by both the photography Burtynsky and the director of the documentary film (Jennifer Baichwal) and how the two forms were brought together in the film. Some of what I observed regarding this question(s) were: the way he took the picture of the workers outside in the street, from up high on a podium/tower, it was quite a picture with the similar colour of yellow running through out the shot then leading from the workers to the yellow line down the street then to yellow flowers and a happy face. I thought the pictures in the film of the faces of the workers as they got into trouble for their shoddy work was very sad in contrast to the pictures just prior of the pouring out into the street. Buchiwal filmed looking up at Burtynsky while he looked through his camera setting up a picture - a picture inside of a picture.

The second question asked was regarding how a quote from our textbook (p. 131) related to the film. I found that his pictures were quite a contrast to the film but without words to tell you what was going on some of the pictures lost their meaning for me. In the introduction to the film I found some of the pictures hard to figure out what exactly things were. Some of the pictures were self explanatory and were to me scary (what are we doing to the earth?) - some of the pictures of the pollution, how the one shot of the lake or river looked, the quarry pictures. It was shocking to me from those pictures how much waste we are creating by raping the earth of its valuable and sometimes unreplaceable resources. Beacause of this, I found some of the pictures he took depressing. The pictures of the waste that was crushed together into cubes and then stacked together - looked like a patchwork of some kind, almost like the way fields look from the air (fields of corn, wheat, etc. look so wholesome compared to the waste). I always knew that the were factories that make every day items by the hundreds but Burtynsky's pictures of the sheer numbers of factory workers was like a sea (only of people all wearing the same colour).

The last questions are regarding environmental issues and how Burtynsky and ATSA are similar in their approaches. Also how are they different? And what my opinion is of the effect in terms of getting attention to the politics of the environment. First the differences: ATSA pictures can be everywhere all the time; pictures, posters, campaigns that are always 'in your face'; they don't let you forget. Burtynsky's pictures and film was, I found, much more shocking and real; his statement in the film about the former oil ships that were being salvaged by hand and how he realized that he was driving his car, filling it with gas, his tripod, and the film for the pictures were all made with or used oil in some form - there just for him to go film the ships being torn apart; kind of ironic!

Some similarities are: both show political viewpoints very well but I think that the feeling you got from the film will be fleeting. The pictures and posters, etc. that ATSA does, they are around you all the time but sooner or later you become desensitized to them, they become commonplace, just another thing you 'see' every day.

His analogy of the oil was an excellent one - that it is the key building block over the last century. This is a very interesting point of view.