Trashing the Virtual Landscape:

Identity and the Digital Archive in

Burtynskys Portraits
Amanda Hardy
We confront, over and over, the truth of technology which technology typically
keeps hidden, or ignores, namely the twinned logic of possibility and negation.
Mark Kingwell, China
1
In September 2011, Symantec, a manufacturer of anti-virus and anti-spyware programs,
as well as other Internet security products for the home, released a television commercial
entitled Stu!. It illustrated the growing connection with intangible stu! in our own
personal digital archives, on our devices, and on the web. Symantecs advertisement went
so far as to suggest our identities were dened by these connections to the digital archive;
the voice-over asks without your stu!, who are you?
2
Edward Burtynsky attempts to
picture the impact of this deepening relationship with stu! in his work on recycling in
China, a book of photographs, where electronic waste (e-waste) landscapes are arguably
positioned as the outcome of increasingly materialistic and consumptive Western society.
In this paper, I suggest these landscapes are unable to fully engage viewers with the e-
waste issue. Instead, I propose that a few of his portraitsunusual subjects for Burtynsky,
and excluded from his photographic narrative on recycling in Chinamay allow viewers
to reect di!erently on the incomprehensible expansion of the digital archive and how
their personal involvement with its production fuels e-waste growth.
UBC Undergraduate Journal of Art History Issue 3 | 2012
1 Mark Kingwell, "e Truth in Photographs: Edward Burtynskys Revelations of Excess, in China:
Te Photographs of Edward Burtynsky, Edward Burtynsky et al. (Gottingen, Ger.: Steidl, 2005), 18.
2 Norton Symantec - Stu!, YouTube video, 1:00, posted by jerinis, September 8, 2011,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2ijjeyWhcg. Symantec also showcased two additional videos (a home
movie of babies and a slideshow of archival photographs) to illustrate why you should protect the stu! that
matters.
Edward Burtynsky, a Canadian ne art photographer, has dedicated the bulk of his
career to capturing images of nature transformed through industry.
3
Since the late
1980s, beginning in North America and expanding globally, Burtynskys lens has trained
on sites where natural landscapes have been altered through industrial activity and this
progress has left its mark. His work is represented and exhibited worldwide, and hangs in
a variety of public and corporate collections; series of his works are published in glossy,
oversize co!ee-table books. Over the past decade, Burtynsky has dedicated substantial
time and resources to in-depth investigations of particular areas and sites. A lm crew
followed his journey through China while he shot photos for China, and produced a
documentary lm entitled Manufactured Landscapes. In short, Burtynsky has spent the last
twenty-ve years purposefully exploring his perspective on, and thematic relationship
with, raw materials, the environment, and industry.
4
Burtynskys images explore the ten-
sion between attraction to a good life, including its material rewards, and repulsion from
the devastating impacts of that good life.
5
He intimates that a comfortable, modern exis-
tence cannot be achieved without some unsettling compromise.
To unpack these paradoxes, Burtynsky has developed a trademark style and ap-
proach. Burtynsky admits that he has always found that the di#cult thing as a ne art
photographer is to nd ways of separating from that sphere of photography-as-folk tradi-
tion. [His] subjects are certainly important, but theyre all connected to one another by
[his] conceptual determination. And that its that [sic] cohesion which makes the di!er-
ence and completes that separation.
6
By cohesion, Burtynsky refers to his strategy: re-
search and site selection process, predominant use of a large-format camera, perspective
which emphasizes size and scale without forsaking detail, careful composition, and print-
making that ultimately exudes beauty. Combined with this conceptual determination is
Burtynskys positioningthat of avoiding a conscious polemic in his representations.
7

In a special feature in Manufactured Landscapes, Burtynsky and the director discuss
how his images do not preach and therefore possess fruitful ambiguity. Instead, the duali-
ties of attraction (an aesthetic seduction that takes the viewer in) and repulsion (a sud-
den realization of another truth to the image) produce a double-take (a reection on the
content, distinct from a formal experience). Burtynskys main interest lies at this point
UBCUJAH | 2012
2
3 Statement/Bio, Edward Burtynsky Photographic Works, accessed November 28, 2011,
http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/index.html.
4 Burtynskys body of work could serve as an archival, ethnographic, or anthropological document.
Further investigation into his creation of a photographic archive, while worth pursuing, is outside the scope of
this paper.
5 Patricia Ballamingie et al., Edward Burtynskys China Photographs A multidisciplinary reading,
Environments Journal 37, no. 2 (2009/2010): 69.
6 Craig Campbell, Residual Landscapes and the Everyday: An Interview with Edward Burtynsky,
Space and Culture 11, no. 1 (February 2008): 44. Photography-as-folk, in the context of this quote and for
the purposes of this paper, is dened similarly to vernacular photography. Vernacular photos, taken by ama-
teur or unknown photographers, document common, everyday things, people, or experiences and might pos-
sess an unintentional artistic quality. Although many of Burtynskys images capture what could be considered
common things, he strives to di!erentiate his work from the vernacular through his rigorous artistic disci-
pline, premeditated thematic content, and monumental approach.
7 Ibid., 46.
of intersection, a universal plane that is mistaken for beauty but he feels is language.
8
He
tries to position the work so that the viewer, while surveying the image, slowly develops
his or her own realization about the work and its message. "is open-endedness to its
narrative is a very conscious decision on [his] part.
9
And, in doing so, Burtynskys ulti-
mate aim is to alter consciousness.
However, this constructed cohesion draws pointed criticism. Most common is
the argument that aesthetics trump the double-take, as Burtynskys beautication of dis-
aster glosses over real issues.
10
In China, Mark Kingwell struggles to reconcile the truth in
Burtynskys images. He questions whether it is possible for an open-ended narrative to
exist when beauty is obviously paramount, and when the viewers exploration of the
double-take becomes so overwhelming the end result is confusion. While he acknowl-
edges the works complexities, and praises Burtynsky for taking what he feels is a much
more obvious political note with China, Kingwell still cautions the images could though
not via direct intention . . . become inert or even disreputable in either or both of two
senses: as mere wallpaper, the sort of well-meaning neutering liable to overtake any work
via fashionable appropriation . . . ; or also, and worse, as slyly doubled avoidance-ritual,
such that a sop to environmental awareness is o!ered and then as quickly withdrawn, or
set aside, by the works surrender to an existing logic of aesthetic appreciation.
11
In direct
reference to Manufactured Landscapes, Ballamingie et al. concur Burtynsky has a main
aesthetic preoccupation with gigantic scale in visual terms, and even point to the use of
panoramic diptychs when a single image becomes inadequate.
12
Geo! Dyer, referring to
later works in Burtynskys Oil, directly attacks Burtynskys composition as bordering on
an indulgence . . . . A Burtynsky photograph . . . is becoming a bit of a production. "ere
is a similar loss of intimacy, the same dependence on scale and spectacle, on the sheer
scale of the spectacle.
13
I interpret these criticisms as reections on Burtynskys growing
popularity and exposure vis--vis his intentions as a ne art photographer. Burtynsky
risks stereotyping his imagesif he has not alreadyand how viewers interact with them
by consistently replicating his strategy. Over time, this continued approach could drain
any enlightening insight from Burtynskys open-ended narrative or the viewers double-
take.
"e philosophically complex problems of e-waste and their link to the rapidly ex-
panding digital archive deserve contemplation. "e archive itself highlights these com-
plexities through its own contested denitions. In her critical evaluation of Robin Kelseys
Amanda Hardy
3
8 Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky, Special Features: Discussion with the Director and Ed-
ward Burtynsky, Manufactured Landscapes, directed by Jennifer Baichwal (Toronto, ON: Mongrel Media,
2007), DVD.
9 Campbell, 46.
10 Burtynsky acknowledges his work is criticized from time to time about beautifying something that
should be seen as a tragedy, and dismisses this criticism as one reading of it, maintaining he strives to pro-
duce a paradoxical representation of the attraction and repulsion we face even in our daily existence.
Baichwal and Burtynsky, Discussion with the Director.
11 Kingwell, "e Truth in Photographs, 18.
12 Ballamingie et al., 87.
13 Geo! Dyer, Edward Burtynsky, in Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and
Reviews 1989-2010, comp. Geo! Dyer (Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2011), 89.
book Archive Style, Joan Schwartz summarizes and questions the archives various intrica-
cies. On one hand, the archive can be a tangible depository or repository for artifacts; on
the other, it can be an intangible concepta system enabling and controlling the pro-
duction of knowledge
14
illustrated through the collection, presentation, and display of
objects. Regardless, Schwartz emphasizes two key points: images (specically, photo-
graphs) are particularly important archival elements with a profound e!ect on our strate-
gies of seeing, engaging and understanding the world;
15
and, presumed scholarly invisi-
bility, authority, or objectivity in creating or manipulating an archive is, at best, opaque.
"e digital archive (loosely dened for the purposes of this paper as intangible arti-
facts accessible by electronic devices) further obfuscates these issues. Geo!rey Batchen
recognizes that the archive is no longer a matter of discrete objects . . . stored and re-
trieved in specic places . . . [but] is also a continuous stream of data, without geography
or container, continuously transmitted and therefore without temporal restriction.
16
Not
only does this archival shift enable hyper-subjectivity with respect to content, it challenges
Schwartzs earlier sentiment on the importance of images (digital manipulation easily ob-
scures veracity) and still cannot resolve the questions of exclusion, participation, or omis-
sion. If the archive has become a uid exchange dependent upon accessing, creating, and
interactingas opposed to a static display of sequentially progressive developmentthen
e-waste becomes an indisputable by-product of the digital archive.
In China, Burtynsky denes e-waste as the toxic recycling practices and refuse
from industrialized nations continuous upgrading of older communications/electronic
infrastructures with modern ones.
17
According to an Environment Canada presentation
on the management of e-waste, over one hundred forty thousand tons (approximately 4.5
kg per person of combined IT and other household electronics) were disposed of in 2002.
Specically, recycled and disposed IT e-waste (telecom and computer/peripheral e-waste
only) was projected to grow at an alarming rate, reaching nearly one hundred twenty
thousand tons by 2005.
18
In a seminal paper on e-waste written a decade ago, the Basel
Action Network (BAN) estimated between 50 and 80 percent of Canadian e-waste was
likely (and, in most cases, illegally) exported to Asia.
19
BANs research into the high-tech
trashing of Asia revealed the transformation of Guiyu, China from a poor, rural rice-
growing community to a booming e-waste processing center. Over one hundred thou-
sand resident and migrant workers, earning an average wage of USD $1.50 per day, were
employed in a multitude of recycling operations ranging from dismantling refuse for pri-
UBCUJAH | 2012
4
14 Robin Kelsey, Archive Style: Photographs for U.S. Surveys, 18501890 (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 2007), 9, quoted in Joan M. Schwartz, Reading Robin Kelseys Archive Style Across the
Archival Divide, Journal of Archival Organization 6, no. 3 (2008): 201.
15 Schwartz, 209.
16 Geo!rey Batchen, Archive, in Deep Storage: Collection, Storing and Archiving, eds. Ingrid Sha!ner
and Matthias Winzen (New York: Prestel, 1998), 47.
17 Burtynsky et al., 134.
18 Michael Vandelpol, Managing E-Waste: Working Towards a Canadian Solution, (Environment
Canada, Canadian Pollution Prevention Roundtable, Calgary, AB, June 12, 2003), 78,
http://c2p2online.com/documents/michaelvandelpol.pdf. A quick scan of other references estimated Cana-
dian e-waste recycling and disposal to reach anywhere between 225,000 and 400,000 tons annually by 2010.
19 Puckett et al., "e Canadian Story, in Exporting Harm: Te High-Tech Trashing of Asia, eds. Jim
Puckett and Ted Smith (Seattle: Basel Action Network, 2002), 3.
mary materials to the open burning of wires and circuit boards for precious metals recov-
ery. Each day hundreds of trucks delivered freshly imported e-waste. During their inves-
tigation in Guiyu, BAN documented serious environmental and health concerns includ-
ing extremely polluted local drinking water and a variety of hazardous materials and tox-
ins found in e-waste.
20
In China Recycling #9 (2004), Burtynsky captures the magnitude of
compounding e-waste through a poignant example. Made with a Linhof Master Tech-
nika 4 x 5 large-format camera, and displayed as large as 4 x 5 feet,
21
the image depicts a
vibrant rural landscape up close. A dirt path on the horizonat approximately three-
quarters the height of the photographseparates a bamboo-lled background from an
undulating foreground of green, beige, and rust. "is multicoloured foreground ripples
from the left frame to the centre, as if cascading forward into the space between the im-
age and viewer.
It emulates a haphazardly collected pile of fall leaves. "e double-take reveals a fore-
ground littered with thousands of stripped circuit boardse-waste, washed up on a road
in Guiyu. Suddenly, Burtynskys ne detail, visible in the circuit board traces, illuminates
Amanda Hardy
5
20 Ibid., 1519 passim.
21 Marcus Schubert, e-mail message to author, November 15, 2011, China Recycling #9 was included in
China; prints were produced in two sizes: 27! x 34! and 39! x 49!.
Fig. 1. Edward Burtynsky, China Recycling #9, Circuit Boards, Guiyu, Guangdong Province,
2004. Digital chromogenic print. Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Nicholas Metivier, Toronto.
Further images from the series may be found at http://www.edwardburtynsky.com.
the sheer volume of the e-waste.
22
In Waste and the Sublime Landscape, Boetzkes
typies Burtynskys trash as sublime nature, as the waste itself overtakes natures sub-
lime force through its persistence, magnitude, and technological sophistication.
23
While
the viewer may connect to an open-ended narrativepresumably the juxtaposition of
Western consumerism with technological advancement, and its e!ectsthe focus on the
waste itself limits the viewer from deeper insight.
Materialism does not solely drive the production of e-waste. Human interaction
with and involvement in the growth of the digital archivehow we practically use digital
archives to manage our lives and work, and how our archives and the internet can be
forms of self-expression connected to our identity (or, even in some cases, the production
of other virtual identities)is the missing human element in e-waste accumulation. "e
refuse is one facet of an iterative loop. As human engagement with digital archive produc-
tion increases, we look for better, faster, more convenient, and more sophisticated ways of
accessing and manipulating the archive. Old tools, while still useable, are replaced by new
tools that allow us to create even closer ties with this archive. "e evidence of our intensi-
fying relationship with devices is everywheresimply observe the number of people in
public places transxed by screens. "is intimate dependence feeds ever-increasing speeds
of technological advancement and tangible trash. Linking to the concept of identity, as
opposed to representing material things, could situate Burtynsky closer to symbolizing the
unknowable futurehow identities and livelihoods will be intertwined with digital ar-
chives. By humanizing the virtual landscape, Burtynsky could better illustrate how we are
all complicit in this growing exploration and production of the digital archive, and its
consequences.
Interestingly, Burtynsky may already possess images that humanize the virtual
landscape in this fashion. Although he excludes these particular photographs from China,
he selectively shares them elsewhere. During his 2005 TED Talk, and in Manufactured
Landscapes, Burtynsky shows three imageswhich I identify as portraits for the purposes
of this paperto buttress his e-waste narrative. China Recycling #12a (2004), Recycling #1
(2004), and China Recycling #22 (2004),
24
with a faceless labourer, a uniformed young
man, and an elderly woman amongst e-waste, form a backdrop for Burtynskys commen-
UBCUJAH | 2012
6
22 Burtynsky denes the image as representative of a new landscape arising in Asia, one where West-
ern culture is laying itself over onto the Asian culture. He sees this photograph as representative of the scale
and consequence of our economic trade, where our products are driving their economy from original manu-
facturing and again through waste. Burtynsky et al., 14.
23 Amanda Boetzkes, Waste and the Sublime Landscape, in Landscape, Cultural Spaces, Ecology,
eds. Lora Senechal Carney and dith-Anne Pageot, special issue, RACAR (Revue d'art canadienne / Canadian
Art Review) 35, no. 1 (2010): 2728.
24 In an e-mail exchange with the author between November 14 and 20, 2011, Schubert (Burtynskys
Director of Media, Publications, and Exhibits) revealed that China Recycling #12a was never released for dis-
tribution, and Burtynskys o#ce does not possess a scan from the negative. It was taken with a Linhof Master
Technika 4 x 5 large-format camera, and is a twin image of China Recycling #12, which was published in
China. #12, however, is void of the human element. Recycling #1 was taken with a Mamiya 7 medium-format
camera and was never printed. China Recycling #22, also taken with the large-format Linhof, was the only
image of the three released as a print (27! x 34!), available in an edition of fteen. Over the course of my
research, I was unable to nd anything written about these photographs. Again, discussion here about
Burtynskys selective use or inclusion in his photographic archive could be relevant but is outside the scope of
this paper.
tary. "ese portraits are in glaring contrast to Burtynskys usual landscapes; there is
something disarming and compelling about them, perhaps because Burtynskys standard
strategy of sizeable, staggering beauty does not apply. In the absence of constructed
beauty, these portraits are less troubled by earlier criticisms of confusion and distraction.
His subject is the individual, and, unlike China Recycling #9, the e-waste becomes a sup-
portingyet importantobject in its incongruence with the rest of the image. In fact,
these images have the feel of snapshots and appear rather vernacular. If Burtynsky dis-
played these alongside his landscapes, he might risk fracturing his cohesion and per-
haps, in his view, eroding his reputation which separates him from photography-as-folk
classication. However, I believe there is signicant merit in the work these portraits do
to picture the possible impact of our growing digital archives. His e-waste portraits help
the viewer refocus the paradox on a micro issuea growing electronic dependence on
managing our lives and expressing our identitiesto understand a macro issue: the com-
pounding volume of e-waste. "e swing from attraction to repulsion might not occur or
might be traded for a less visceral viewer response, but humanization of the archives in-
tangibility may help the viewer process its implications di!erently. A closer reading of
these photographs helps illustrate this argument.
In China Recycling #12a, least straightforward of the portraits, the focus is not di-
rectly on the human subject; however, the bright orange gloves draw the eye immediately
Amanda Hardy
7
Fig. 2. Edward Burtynsky, China Recycling #12a, E-waste Sorting, Zeguo, Zhejiang
Province, 2004. Digital chromogenic print. Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Nicholas
Metivier, Toronto.
to the intent concentration on their work at the top-centre of the frame. While it could
be said Burtynskys tilted, downward perspective suggests an attempt to create scale in a
clearly small space, the overwhelming metaphor is one of meal preparation and is inti-
mate. "e large ceramic and clay bowls and wicker baskets hold raw ingredients and con-
diments, various inputs to some complicated recipethe ingredients and recipe being the
interwoven waste and future new tools of the digital archive. "e arrangement of bowls
and baskets implies a clean and organized kitchen workspace, scattered tools recall
kitchen utensils, and blue powder (the residue of smashed electronic bits and pieces) is
like traces of our gone astray. "e wicker basket and metal container sitting to the left of
the subject hold unusable ingredients, ones that do not quite t with the rest of the recipe.
An empty stool in the middle-left of the frame, bereft of the subjects companion, indi-
cates cooperation and shared investment in this activity. In this image, the digital archive
fuels the future; the double meaning attached to fuels is intentional here, meaning the
archive will both sustain us as individuals and literally put food on the table as tradi-
tional occupations are usurped by technology. In her book High Tech Trash, author Eliza-
beth Grossman comments that before e-waste processing took root in Guiyu, the area
had been agricultural. A glossy 2004 brochure from the Guiyu equivalent of the chamber
of commerce shows a picture of a plump green watermelon on the vine. But farming in
UBCUJAH | 2012
8
Fig. 3. Edward Burtynsky, China Recycling #1, Yard Worker, Guiyu, Guangdong Province,
2004. Digital chromogenic print. Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Nicholas Metivier, Toronto.
Guiyu has been abandoned for the more lucrative scrap electronics work . . . .
25
I believe
the portraits disruption, from expectations of raw materials to the presence of e-waste,
allows the viewer to reect on ways technology, and the archive, impact lives and liveli-
hoods.
Connected to the sustenance metaphor is the idea that virtual stu! will be the
building blocks of our identity, as in Recycling #1. "e composition of this banal snapshot-
type portrait allows the viewer to focus on the subject (a seated young man in the centre
of the image), although it has been taken from a distance to include the compacted e-
waste terrace behind him. "e neat and linear stack of densied cubes resembles an archi-
tectural feature, but is also reminiscent of various personal electronics like desktop com-
puters, with their rectangular shape and predominantly silver, grey, and beige colouring.
Burtynskys yard worker adopts a relaxed posehis cap at a jaunty angle, his hands casu-
ally resting on the chair arms, his legs crossedand gazes directly at the viewer with a
gentle smile, as if showing pride in his work. With this portrait, there is a sense of owner-
ship at play between the worker and the objects he claims responsibility for in his yard; I
argue here that we are all partly dened by the work we do, and we seek satisfaction from
our work. As we lean on technology and the digital archive to facilitate our work and our
lives, our identities will become increasingly fastened to virtual stu!.
Lastly, in China Recycling #22, labelled as a portrait by Burtynsky, the viewer is con-
fronted with a mesmerizing vision of how we will all live with the consequences of the
archives production. Centre-right in the photograph a diminutive, very elderly woman
sits in a formal, sti! pose on her front porch next to a pile of e-waste. Her concrete porch
is crudely nished, and e-waste detritus lingers everywhere but the clean path to her front
door. Tools are scattered about; a hammer and chisel are near her feet, and a shovel head
balances precariously o! the side of the porch with its handle atop the e-waste pile. "is
e-waste is not small, sorted parts, or neat cubes of metal. It is an ugly, jumbled mess:
wires, components, circuit boards. "e womans expression is inscrutablea mixture of
patience, stoicism, humility, determination, or exhaustion? She appears composed in con-
trast to her surroundings, yet she is clearly working at physically dismantling this garbage.
"is portrait raises the question: how long before the e-waste problem will be on our
front porch?
While Burtynskys portraits work to humanize the virtual landscape, they also tee-
ter dangerously on the edge of Othering their subjects. As a privileged Western traveler
in Chinaand an artist whose intent is to avoid polarizing preachingthese portraits
could jeopardize Burtynskys reputation in such a way that would render his concerns
about a photography-as-folk label completely irrelevant. Ballamingie et al. urge West-
ern viewers to consider how Burtynskys images seem to reproduce Western-centric
stereotypes of the Chinese Other through the strangeness and fearfulness of the scale of
things, the communication of oppression and passivity, consistent with the somewhat
stereotypical (and reductionist) view that the Chinese are subjects who just do what they
are told, and the characterization of pitied as the oppressed and lifeless or dismissed as
Amanda Hardy
9
25 Elizabeth Grossman, High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health (Washing-
ton, DC: Island Press, 2006), 187.
the duped.
26
All three portraits could be read as containing strong social and environ-
mental inequities. In addition, Ballamingie et al. ask whether Burtynskys photographs
employ either overexposure or underexposure to picture the Other. By selectively choos-
ing how these portraits are shared and distributed, is Burtynsky underexposing his sub-
jects in ways that limit viewers from fully developing an open-ended narrative?
While China Recycling #12a may be the least identiable as a portrait, it perhaps
carries the most signicant potential for Othering its subject. "ere is the obvious issue of
the faceless, agency-less subject portrayed from an angle that looks down upon their
work; additionally, there is Burtynskys questionable choice to publish the version without
human gures in it in China. "e workplace environment captured in this image evokes
the stereotype of a noninstitutional, unsophisticated cottage industry; akin to a Western
mom-and-pop shop or corner grocery storethis e-waste business is a beacon of opti-
mistic entrepreneurial spirit. Other rsthand accounts of e-waste meal preparation,
however, do not match Burtynskys orderly outdoor kitchen scene: In smaller outdoor
workshops we see chopped-up circuit boards being roasted in uncovered pans to melt
away plastics and isolate valuable metals. "e scene reminds me of the open-air restau-
rants Ive visited in China, but instead of pan-fried noodles the fare here is seared semi-
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26 Ballamingie et al., 7273. In their paper, Ballamingie et al. reference only published images and do
not touch on the portraits discussed in this paper.
Fig. 4. Edward Burtynsky, China Recycling #22, Portrait of a Woman in Blue, Zeguo,
Zhejiang Province, 2004. Digital chromogenic print. Edward Burtynsky, courtesy
Nicholas Metivier, Toronto.
conductor, replete with lead, brominated ame retardants, and plasticizers.
27
While not
beautiful in the same sense as his landscapes, this portrait has been sterilized. It seems to
romanticize, or lament, the workers decision to turn away from a noble, agricultural life-
style and overlays this sensibility on their new working environment. By capturing the
subject with their head down and working hard, Burtynsky also appears to emphasize
their disposability, their tiny role and futile responsibility inside the countrys quasi-
capitalist machine.
Similarly, with China Recycling #22, Burtynsky explains this nostalgia for rural life
through the woman in blue. He was evidently drawn to this ninety-ve-year-old woman
(she agreed to sit for the portrait) who bore witness to many political transitions in
China. Shes been through Mao, and shes been through the Great Leap Forward, and
the Cultural Revolution, and now shes sitting on her porch with this e-waste beside her.
Its quite something.
28
Burtynsky editorializes, though, that todays e-waste transition
carries harsher consequenceshealth problems, birth defects, illnessesand summarizes
her expression as sadness from the transition from rural life to a life of recycling
computers.
29
With this comment, Burtynsky reduces the elderly woman to an object of
Chinas political machinations. "e evidence of hardship and poverty are a foil to her
pride in appearance and dignity. Is she truly sad for progresss sakeor is this a projec-
tion, a layer of Western guilt? Burtynsky accepts this is an untenable environment, but
holds it up as an example of a solely Chinese economic issue.
Finally, a comparable assessment applies to Recycling #1. Closer inspection reveals
the yard workers uniform is not the solid olive drab seen at rst glance. His jacket, espe-
cially, seems covered in an oily substancenot wet, but saturated (as are his gloves, and
pants to his knees). He begins to look dislocated, dirty, and perhaps slightly uncomfort-
able in the tidy, swept yard. Firsthand accounts claim workers in Guiyu bemoaned the
pollution and the many unsavoury aspects of the opportunistic waste trade, saying they
didnt want their children . . . to engage in this work.
30
Photographs accompanying
BANs treatise also picture Guiyu e-waste recycling operations in a starkly di!erent light.
Burn yards are a sea of colourful, intermingled wires by day and melting pools of toxic
hydrocarbons and dioxins at night. Other typical e-scrap operations nowhere near re-
semble Recycling #1s yard. Instead, desktop computer covers gaping and disman-
tledsit askew amongst overwhelmingly diverse piles of assorted waste; one overturned
cover doubles as a workers stool. In BANs images, none of the individuals, save for one
sporting lemon-yellow rubber gloves while heating aqua regia (a solution that dissolves
gold), wear work clothing.
31
Does Burtynskys portrait, then, glorify e-waste recycling?
Would a Western viewer, burdened with expectations of appropriate environmental stew-
ardship and behaviour, therefore project the notion of pride in good work onto this por-
Amanda Hardy
11
27 Grossman, 183.
28 Edward Burtynsky, Edward Burtynsky: Manufactured Landscapes, lmed February 2005, TED
Talks, 34:28, posted October 2006,
http://www.ted.com/talks/edward_burtynsky_on_manufactured_landscapes.html.
29 Edward Burtynsky, Special Features: Stills Gallery with Commentary, Manufactured Landscapes.
30 Grossman, 187.
31 Puckett et al., Exporting Harm, 69.
trait? Or, does the yard worker become a character in a photographic satire which exposes
the inadequacy of his protective equipment and hints at his polluted environment? "e
irony is that this good work is not at all good, and will get worse as the digital archive ma-
tures.
Ultimately, some controversy over Otheringa kind of white trash coloniza-
tionin these portraits might yield positive dialogue for Burtynsky and his viewers. "is
new type of paradox, still somewhat grounded in a dichotomy of attraction versus repul-
sion, could neutralize indi!erenceor the fear of reducing Burtynskys photographs to
wallpaperby forcing the viewer to self-reect. Burtynskys landscapes lose the viewers
individual sense of self, as the prominence of size, scale, and magnitude points to the col-
lective. In contrast, Burtynskys portraits bond instead with ideas of identity and identi-
cation. "e disruptive presence of e-waste presses the viewerand particularly Western
viewers aware of Chinas dominance in manufacturing, and its related environmental and
social impactsto consider how their lives, livelihoods, environment, and surroundings
are a!ected by technology. By humanizing the indescribable virtual landscape, Burtyn-
skys portraits allow viewers the space to contemplate their role in the paradox of the digi-
tal archivea seemingly boundary-less virtual repository with tangible, physical manifes-
tations.

UBCUJAH | 2012
12