| Tim Hawkinson | Octopus | | Cindy Sherman | Untitled Film Still #82 | | Robert Glenn Ketchum | Lakeshore in Morning Fog | | Abelardo Morell | Camera Obscura Image of the Grand Tetons in Resort Room, Jackson Hole, Wyoming | | John Sanchez | Rachel Rosenthal, Artist | | Mitch Epstein | Buena Vista, Colorado | | Leland Rice | Volkswagen With Figure | | Catherine Wagner | The Lamps of 1900 | | Ned Sloane | Telephone Pole Piece, Los Angeles: Photograph of Kim Jones | | Andrew Freeman | #3.4.04- Don Becker's Garage & Guesthouse, Independence, California N36O.48.229 - W118O.11.620 | | Ken Gonzales-Day | Franklin Avenue (1920) | | Jo Ann Callis | Man in Tie | | Bruce Nauman | Burning Small Fires (Artist Book) | | Annie Leibovitz | Scarlett Johansson, Chateau Marmont, West Hollywood | | David Maisel | Oblivion 1382-52p | | Gilbert B. Weingourt | Timothy Leary | | Richard Misrach | Untitled (Ocotillo) | | Edward Steichen | Sylvia Sidney, Hollywood | | Ruben Ochoa | Fwy Wall Extraction | | Hunter S. Thompson and others | From "Gonzo" | | Henry Wessel | Las Vegas No. 15 | | James Fee | Epiphany | | John Baldessari | Face (with Red Nose): Plus Four Alternate Noses | | Anthony Hernandez | Everything #2 | | Ansel Adams | Graduation dress | | Loretta Ayeroff | Mountain View, Edris Drive | | Grant Mudford | Walt Disney Concert Hall, Under Construction #7 | | Frederick Sommer | Stendhal | | Tina Modotti | Interior of the Church Tower at Tepotzotlan | | Henri Cartier-Bresson | Mexico City | | Irving Penn | Hell's Angels, San Francisco | | William Dassonville | From Glacier Point | | Christina Fernandez | Fashion International | | Mark Laita | Air Traffic Controller, Todd Phipps, Palmdale, California, May 5, 2006
Juggler, Sergey Gripkov, Los Angeles, February 21, 2000 | | Mark Wyse | Untitled Landscape | | U.S. Air Force 1352nd Photographic Group, Lookout Mountain Station | Sugar, 1.2 Kilotons, Nevada | | Julius Shulman | Von Sternberg Residence, Northridge | | Joaquin Trujillo | Amy, Los Ninos | | Robert Heinecken | Shiva Manifesting as a Single Mother | | Han Nguyen | Tsunami | | Melanie Einzig | Bikram Yoga Instructor, North Beach, San Francisco | | John Patrick Salisbury | Untitled No. 134 | | Karen Halverson | Gamble House Entry | | Bill Owens | 4th of July Parade, Pleasanton, California | | Catherine Opie | My Studio, Suzanne's Work | | Eliot Porter | Reflections in Pool, Escalante River, Utah | | Adam Bartos | Los Angeles | | Stan Honda | From the Heart Mountain Barracks Project | | Hiromu Kira | The Thinker | | Jeff Mermelstein | Yosemite National Park, California | | Lewis Baltz | West Wall, Unoccupied Industrial Structure, 20 Airway Drive, Costa Mesa | | Dennis Hopper | Robert Irwin | | Hansel Mieth and Otto Hagel | S.F. Water Front | | Edward Burtynsky | Oxford Tire Pile #8, Westley, California | | Beahan & McPhee | Almond Trees and Flood Irrigation, Oakdale | | Larry Sultan | Boxers, Mission Hills | | Isabel Gomes | Blue Horizon, Santa Rosa Island | | Edward Weston | Cabbage Leaf | | Anthony Friedkin | Offshore Winds, Zuma Beach | | Richard Long | Donner Pass Circle: Along a 20 Day Walk from Ebbetts Pass to the North Fork Feather River Sierra Nevada California 2005 | | John Swope | Dorothy McGuire, Beverly Hills | | Hans-Christian Schink | LA Night #1 | | Herve Friend | Redlands From Smiley Hill | | Joel Sternfeld | Queen of the Prom, the Range Nightclub, Slab City, California |
| | |  |
| |
Edward Burtynsky
Oxford Tire Pile #8, Westley, California
1999
Robert Koch Gallery
© Edward Burtynsky; Courtesy of Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco
LL/16151
Photo Synthesis
Colin Westerbeck
Writing about a picture of an almond grove last Sunday, I mentioned that a canyon full of tires was the subject photographers Virginia Beahan and Laura McPhee had originally set out to document. This week's photograph is of the site they had been searching for. In fact, the tip that Edward Burtynsky was following came from the same source McPhee's father, John, whose 1997 book "Irons in the Fire"
describes this place.
A Canadian, Burtynsky says he was attracted to such industrial blight, which he has photographed worldwide, because "I was born in a country with a small population and a vast hinterland." Although his subjects have ranged from this mountain of tires to rivers of molten nickel tailings, he resists letting his images become polemical. He walks a path between art and propaganda as narrow and precarious as the one you see here between two unstable cliffs of rubber scree.
In 1997, when the tires that Oxford had begun dumping near Westley in the 1950s numbered 6 million, the state stepped in to dispose of them. Shortly after Burtynsky photographed Oxford #8, lightning started a fire in the pile that took weeks to extinguish.
[Originally published in West Magazine : April 16, 2006, p.13]
| |
|
LuminousLint 
@LuminousLint