a preview
I just saw Jennifer Baichwal’s film documentary “Manufactured Landscapes” in preparation for an upcoming interview with its subject, the photographer Edward Burtynsky. I came out seeing everything I own in a different way.
Actually the film isn’t not really about Burtynsky so much as the industrial landscapes — if that’s the word — that he photographs, so it serves more as a companion to his photos than a discourse on them. Baichwal lets the images speak at length for themselves, beginning with a long, long track shot across the length of a Chinese factory that seems to go on for a kilometer.
Unfortunately the venue where I saw it was a press screening room, and these often draw peculiar people: Older sarariman who somehow get invite postcards, sneak out of their offices and come for the purpose of napping. They snore, like the man two seats down from me, but as soon as the lights came up they’re the first ones out the door.
The film will play at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and at Image Forum from July 12. More later.