"These images," Burtynsky has written of his work, "are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear."
That statement comes off as rather grand, but its accuracy is borne out by the 20 images in "Edward Burtynsky: The China Series," which runs at the Tufts University Art Gallery through April 1.
Like their subject, they're very big. Most are in the vicinity of 4 feet by 5 feet. Burtynsky has grouped them in four bluntly designated categories: "Urban Renewal," "Recycling," Manufacturing," "Dam" (referring to the Three Gorges Dam , the ongoing, 16-year-project that seeks to tame the Yangtze). He gives his photographs just-the-facts titles, like "Shipyard #22," followed by their geographic location. They don't need anything beyond that. These images make words seem like paltry things. They show what can barely be imagined, let alone described.
Burtynsky uses scale. It's central to his enterprise. There's nothing gratuitous or showy about the size of these pictures. You could even argue his photographs are best understood as oversize miniatures: snapshots from Brobdingnag . The dump trucks in "Feng Jie #6, " at a Three Gorges work site, look like Tonka toys in the vast setting. (Tonka, in fact, now makes its trucks in China.)
"Urban Renewal #4, Old City Overview, Shanghai" presents a layering of human development -- a kind of three-dimensional building time line -- with tumbledown homes in the foreground giving way to mid-size apartment houses of concrete and stone, then a Manhattan-size array of high rises looming in the background. "Urban Renewal #1, Factory Construction" combines past and future, nature and industry, as two walls of bamboo scaffolding line an unpaved, puddled avenue. Off in the distance is a completed factory.
