Edward Burtynsky

The first thing I thought about when I saw Edward Burtynsky's photographs of the mines and the Three Gorges Dam in China was how those projects have affected my family. Both of my brothers work in construction, and the cost of steel and concrete in America rose dramatically because of the massive scale of the Dam in China; he talked about the footprint that China is leaving on the Earth, and this shows how widespread it can be in many areas. I really liked how the photos of the factories in China came across, the order with which they work and the conduct themselves was very apparent in the photographs. The factory where the cabs were being manufactured showed the massiveness with which they operate. My favorite photographs that he showed were of the tires. I'm not exactly sure why, but seeing this massive pile of tires and having it only be a fraction of what is actually there struck me as very interesting. I would have like to see a photograph from above showing the amount of space these tires took up, I believe he said there were 45 million of them; it's almost incomprehensible.