Edward Burtynsky

“I have come to think of my preoccupation with the Anthropocene — the indelible marks left by humankind on the geological face of our planet — as a conceptual extension of my first and most fundamental interests as a photographer. I have always been concerned to show how we affect the Earth in a big way. To this end, I seek out and photograph large-scale systems that leave lasting marks.” – Edward Burtynsky

This is a photograph taken by Edward Burtynsky in 2017 of damaged cars in the Royal Purple Raceway, Texas. This image is part of a series of photographs from his ‘Anthropocene’ project/book published in 2018.

In this photograph you can see hundreds or even thousands of cars that were damaged by a flood and are no longer in use. There are around 12 visible blocks of land full of rows of different coloured cars. The only thing separating these blocks are some dirt roads (it makes the image look like a grid). Burtynsky took this image from a very high angle to show the amount of cars there are and destroyed land that could’ve been used for something more useful. It doesn’t capture the whole area, but it does look like it goes on forever.

This shows the amount of waste people create and their impact. We mass produce objects and when they are no longer usable we gather them together and leave them. This leads to the environment and ecosystems being destroyed in order to make space for more and more garbage.