I recently came across this photographer, as it happens, just after an exhibition of his China photogarphs at Tufts University closed (January 15 – April 01). The photographs, which are online at edwardburtynsky.com, evoke feelings of disgust and attraction, beauty and repulsiveness at the same time. I found strong resonance with his subject, the effect of industry upon the natural environment. Burtynsky has vision, a great photographic eye and obvious technical talent and this has not gone unnoticed – see the list of galleries that represent Burtynsky at the end of this post.

Burtynsky’s exposition of the uneven exchange between industrial and natural forces is formally riveting. His subjects are out of the way of our daily experience, yet they form the support system upon which the status quo of our contemporary human population depends. In these images of the reshaped terra firma, we are unquestionably aware of the epic results of our human actions upon the natural environment. I find guilt welling up as I stare at the disturbing content of these photographs and acknowledge their visual allure.

I think any time an artist is able to capture a world that appears self contained in its aesthetic and out of any possible ordinary existence, it is bound to achieve some success. But perhaps the very fact that these images seem so foreign should be a cause for concern. Burtynsky’s artist website aptly states that he, “raises all kinds of questions about ethics and aesthetics without trying to easily answer them.”

I am reminded of Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire with it’s five stages: The Savage State, The Pastoral State, Consummation of Empire, Destruction and Desolation in its attempt to capture the stages of advanced societies. But where Cole is pedantic, Burtynsky is questioning. Burtynsky does not speak in metaphors of white marble and ancient states; in his own words, “these images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear.”

Thomas Cole
The Course of Empire: The Savage State
1834
courtesy sbu.edu

Thomas Cole
The Course of Empire: The Pastoral or Arcadian State
1834
courtesy sbu.edu

Thomas Cole
The Course of Empire: The Consumation of Empire
1835-1836
courtesy sbu.edu

Thomas Cole
The Course of Empire: Destruction
1836
courtesy sbu.edu

Thomas Cole
The Course of Empire: Desolation
1836
courtesy sbu.edu

The canadian photographer refers to his images as the residual landscape. He says, “I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning.”

Three Gorges Dam

“Building mega dams in the 21st century… The winners of this massive undertaking include those who improved their standard of living and benefited from new housing and new opportunities. China’s industries, hungry for electricity, also win. However, there are many who must face short-term hardship. For instance, farming families stand to lose much as their ancestral lands disappear, often without sufficient compensation. Farmers relocated to land parcels further uphill face the prospect of poor soil, steep slopes and erosion. Furthermore, schemes aimed at integrating farmers into urban economies have met with very limited success. Environmental degradation, escalating costs and human rights concerns are the main issues entangling mega-dam projects today. Experts argue that a series of smaller dams may enable more effective strategies for dealing with flood control. However, the Three Gorges Dam project is a source of intense national pride and the government’s masthead project to show the world what kind of formidable accomplishments it is capable of.”

Edward Burtynsky
Dam #6
Three Gorges Dam Project, Yangtze River, 2005
courtesy edwardburtynsky.com

Edward Burtynsky
Feng Jie #4
Three Gorges Dam Project, Yangtze River, 2002
courtesy edwardburtynsky.com

Old Industry
“In the late 1990s, China’s government came under intense financial pressure to turn around failing industries. Under Zhu Rongji, China’s then economic czar, tough decisions were made. Ensuing massive layoffs rocked the Northeast’s SOEs, inciting protests and riots by workers angry about inadequate severance promises and compensation packages. Factories once employing 20,000 now function at similar or increased productivity levels using 75 per cent less employees – a testament to the effectiveness of the government’s restructuring policies.”

Edward Burtynsky
Old Factories #5
Shenyang Heavy Machinery Group, Tiexi District, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, China, 2005
courtesy edwardburtynsky.com

Edward Burtynsky
Old Factories #8
Shenyang Heavy Machinery Group, Tiexi District, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, China, 2005
courtesy edwardburtynsky.com

Bao Steel

“Bao Steel is the sixth largest steel producer in the world. The company employs 15,600 people. Almost all of Baosteel’s iron ore is imported, being sourced in Australia, Brazil, South Africa and India. In 2005, Baosteel will produce 16 million tons of steel, consuming over 18 million tons of domestic coal in the process.4 The firm’s products are exported all over the world: East Asia, Southeast Asia, North America and the European Union. Baosteel also supplies steel to Chinese vehicle manufacturers like Audi, General Motors, Ford and Volkswagen and domestic appliance manufacturers, as well as the tubular needs of the Chinese oil and gas exploration industry.”

Edward Burtynsky
Bao Steel #2
Shanghai, China, 2005
edwardburtynsky.com

Edward Burtynsky
Tanggu Port
Tianjin, China, 2005
courtesy edwardburtynsky.com

Upcoming Exhibtions

Edward Burtynsky: The China Series (touring exhibition) curated by David Brown – Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), – Winston-Salem, North Carolina October 22, 2007 – April 30, 2008

Representation

Toronto – Nicholas Metivier Gallery
New York – Charles Cowles Gallery
San Francisco – Robert Koch Gallery
London – Flowers East
Calgary – Paul Kuhn Gallery
Barcelona – Galeria Toni Tapies
Cologne РGalerie Stefan R̦pke
Montreal – Art 45

All quoted text courtesy edwardburtynsky.com

I am revisiting a recent post on Chuck Close’s handmade paper prints to elaborate on the process of pochoir.

Pochoir, the French word for stencil, is a printmaking method in which one or more carefully cut stencils are used to hand-color a set of prints. In fact, the average pochoir print could be the product of 20 to 250 stencils. Each color uses a separate stencil and brush dab on the paint, and each stencil is applied in turn, so it is essential to place the stencils exactly in position. The pochoir process is characterized by brilliant colors and crisp lines and produces images that have a freshly printed or wet appearance.

A pochoir print of Matisse’s “Polynesia”
From Henri Matisse: Les Nus bleus III, published by Bernard Chauveau Editeur

Illustration (plate 20) by Francis Jourdain (1898-1937) from Repertoire du Gout Moderne. No. 1, Paris: Levy, 1928-1929
Courtesy NLDM

1. Amaurodes Passerinii. Mozambique; 2. Inca clathratus. Pérou; 3. Histrionica euchroea. Madagascar; 4. Cerathorhina derbyana. Mozambique. 5. Goliathus giganteus. Cameroun
E.A. Séguy, Courtesy NLDM

The use of stencils to color pictures dates back to 500 C.E. in China and was “also used in Europe from the 1500’s onward to decorate playing cards, postcards and to create simple prints.” NLDM The increased popularity in Japanese prints in the middle of the 19th century stimulated the refinement of stencils into the art form known as pochoir. Pochoir was used popularly in Paris during the early decades of the 20th century, especially in the art deco period, where it was used for fashion plates, patterns and architectural design.

Image from Compositions, Couleurs, Idees by Sonia Delaunay.
Paris: C. Moreau, [1930?]. Call No. NK1535.D45 oversize.
Courtesy University of Cincinnati

According to the national Design Museum Library, in the first part of the 20th century, there were as many as thirty graphic design studios in France, each employing up to 600 workers. In the United States, the art form gave way early to other printmaking methods such as serigraphy and silkscreening. Publisher Bernard Chaveau notes, “it reached its apogee in France in the 1920s and 1930s, but today it’s almost a lost art. It takes up to five years to master the technique. Artisans must minutely analyze the original art and be absolutely precise when cutting the stencils. They must also have a very good eye for mixing color and an ability to apply it evenly from one plate to the next.”

Pochoir begins with the analysis of the composition, including color tones and densities, of a color image. Numerous stencils were designed as a means of reproducing an image. A craftsman known as a découpeur would cut stencils with a straight-edged knife. The stencils were originally made of aluminum, copper, or zinc but eventually the material of choice was either celluloid or plastic. Along with this transition of stencil materials, there was a shift away from the use of watercolor towards the broad, soft, opaque layers of gouache. The technique was further refined in an effort to create the most vivid, accurately colored reproductions. Stencils created by the découpeur would be passed on to the coloristes. The coloristes applied the pigments using a variety of different brushes and methods of paint application to create the finished pochoir print. NLDM

The art of stenciling is not really lost – permutations can be found in contemporary painting, drawing, and street art.

This is a stencil by the infamous street artist Banksy:

Courtesy banksy.co.uk

This is a recent drawing from a series of stencilled houses I have been working on:

House
Pen on Paper
2007
(Justin Shull)

Selected resources on pochoir:

• National Museum of History and Technology. Pochoir. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1979.
• University of California, Santa Barbara. Pochoir: Flowering of the Hand-Color Process in Prints and Illustrated Books, 1910:1935: An Exhibition by Burr Wallen and Stephen Greengard. Santa Barbara, CA: UCSB Art Museum, 1977.
• Valotaire, M. “The Pochoir Process of Colour Reproduction.” In The Studio, XCII, 1926, pgs. 236-240.
• A great collection of pochoir images is available online at: Vibrant Visions: Pochoir Prints in the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum Library
• An extended resource listing on pochoir is available at: http://www.sil.si.edu/ondisplay/pochoir/bibliography.htm

Macromedia Flash is a vector engine, meaning that it’s visual objects consist of vector outlines and vector fills. So what’s a vector? A vector is a mathematical equation that defines the location of a line over a Cartesian coordinate system.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.org

Although I do not have a background in mathematics – if anyone reading this does and finds this incorrect please comment! – it is my understanding that the system used to define the vector image uses analytic geometry: “also called coordinate geometry and earlier referred to as Cartesian geometry or analytical geometry, is the study of geometry using the principles of algebra. Usually the Cartesian coordinate system is applied to manipulate equations for planes, lines, curves, and circles, often in two and sometimes in three dimensions of measurement. As taught in school books, analytic geometry can be explained more simply: it is concerned with defining geometrical shapes in a numerical way, and extracting numerical information from that representation. The numerical output, however, might also be a vector or a shape.” (analytic geometry)The space in which the vector objects exist is also referred to as vector space or linear space. Vector space is “a collection of objects (called vectors) that, informally speaking, may be scaled and added.” (vector space) As far as Flash is concerned, we are not adding vectors.

Bitmap to Vector Conversion

Flash starts with a bitmap – a pixellated image – and tries to render it into vector artwork. The Trace Bitmap engine selects solid color areas, converting them into vector fills. The degree of accuracy of the vector image “ranges from reproducing each pixel with a separate vector object, to outlining areas of pixels of similarly interpreted colors with few vector objects. The higher the degree of accuracy specified by the [available] settings increases the amount of vectors that are generated.” (trace bitmap function)

As one zooms in on a bitmap, the individual pixels of the object become apparent.

As one zooms in on a vector fill, the line remains smooth and
crisp because the engine redraws the image each time the zoom resolution is changed. (see below)

So? To the point of this blog entry, Flash’s Trace Bitmap is the final stage of an human assisted electronic transformation of objects into a new pictorial reality. Three dimensional space is recorded into a digital format that translates visually into a two dimensional plane of pixels. The pixels are reinterpreted into a series of mathematical equations that translates visually into a two dimensional plane of vectorized shapes. The end result? At a magnified scale we have a set of color fills defined by straight and curved lines intersecting in a clearly systematic, although not quickly discernible pattern.

With certain image details, such as foliage, these shapes develop their own pictorial movement – something along the lines of a dance or the notes on a piece of sheet music. Whether the shapes return to the original object is not of concern.

Here is a magnified, vectorized image of foliage:

Rhizophora mangle (red mangrove)