Petroaesthetics and Landscape Photography
Petroaesthetics and Landscape Photography
New Topographics, Edward Burtynsky, and the Culture of Peak Oil
This chapter examines two significant photographic exhibitions—the 1975 New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, New York, and a 2009 traveling exhibition of Edward Burtynsky’s photographs of oil landscapes, entitled Burtynsky: Oil. It employs the two exhibitions to explore the quiet resonances of unease and anxiety that structure contemporary landscape photographers’ visions of petromodernity. It considers what landscape photography does to frame both the oil industry and the pervasive petroculture it supports on both a political and an affective level. It also discusses landscape photography in relation to petro-postmodernity and petroaesthetics. It argues that both New Topographics and Burtynsky’s Oil offer insight into the “structures of feeling” that define life in the West in the age of oil.
Keywords: exhibitions, Edward Burtynsky, photographs, oil landscapes, petromodernity, landscape photography, oil industry, petroculture, petro-postmodernity, petroaesthetics
Minnesota Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
