Representing the Infrastructural Landscape: a

Representing the Infrastructural Landscape:
a study through painting
By Zoé Edgecomb
Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, artists have been painting and photographing the
landscapes created by new technologies. Beyond mere documentation, these works have revealed
attitudes toward landscape and toward the changes brought by modernity. The purpose of the
study of which these paintings are a part is to examine what it means to pictorialize the industrial
landscape and how paintings can integrate or be integrated into a mode of representation that
reveals the systemic nature of these landscapes rather than merely presenting them as views. The
choice of a sewage treatment plant as a subject raised many questions. What is beauty? What
hidden systems lie behind our pristine lives? What can a painting communicate? Should it be a
didactic instrument? Is formal beauty enough? Is accuracy necessary?
The act and intention behind representing the landscape is not as universal as we might believe.
Likewise, the framing of the view, made scientific by techniques of Brunelleschian perspective, has a
history that coincides with the societal changes brought by capitalism and industrialization. Implicit
in this methodology are ideas of possession of the land: the double meaning of the word “prospect”
illustrates this.
The industrial landscape has been photographed by figures such as Edward Burtynsky, Bernd and
Hilla Becher, and John Pfahl. Paintings have been done most famously by Charles Sheeler. Most
of these works treat their subject formally, examining light and shadow, elegant geometry, and the
sublimity implied by their large scale. Early representations questioned the implications behind the
intrusion of the railroad into the pastoral countryside. A tension was often evident between this and a
celebration of Progress. Later, photographers such as Emmett Gowin drew attention to the destructive
impact of industries such as mining and manufacturing. Even as environmental awareness began
to inform the representation of the industrial landscape, relationships to landscape context and the
processual nature of the works themselves remained secondary.
As a functional landscape, the water treatment plant is evidence of our dependence on and
connection with industrial process. The Rivanna plant utilizes electrical energy, bacteria, and
recycled methane gas to convert a polluted influent to a pristine effluent that can re-enter the river. The
landscape of the plant, devoid of human figures, nevertheless speaks of our connection with the land,
however abstracted. The circular basins, surge pumps, and valves are the machine evidence of our
habits of consumption. This is a system that is intimately connected to the hydrologic cycle, the nutrient
cycle, and the cycle of life. It is illustrative of our position within nature, rather than outside. Yet the
process of looking and recording inevitably involves a distancing. The paintings are still abstractions.
precedents and notes
American Landscape, Upper deck, and Red on the White.
Charles Sheeler.
Siège Trieu Kaisin, Charleroi, B 1971. Bernd and Hilla
Becher.
Glen Lyon Breaker, Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, USA 1974.
Bernd and Hilla Becher.
Siamese Twins, 1987.
Vimy Ridge, 1993.
Geoffrey James, Canadian.
The Port of Montreal, 1924.
Adrien Hébert, Canadian.
Shipbreaking # 13, Chittagong, Bangladesh. Burtynsky.
Map of the
progressive
channel changes
of the Mississippi
River from
D.O. Elliot, The
Improvement
of the Lower
Mississippi for
Flood Control
and Navigation,
1932.
Map showing
trans-valley
cross-sections,
from Harold
N. Fisk,
Geological
Investigation
of the Alluvial
Valley of
the Lower
Mississippi
River. 1944.
“Distribution of
Project Flood,”
from P.A. Feringa
and W. Schweizer,
One Hundred
Years Improvement
on the Lower
Mississippi River,
1952.
Three representations of a river, from Anu Mathur and Dilip de Cunha, Mississippi Floods.
Water Treatment Pond at the
Confluence of the Willamette
and Columbia Rivers, Portland,
Oregon,1986. Emmett Gowin,
American.
Chicage, Illinois, USA 1978. Bernd and Hilla Becher.
Oil Refineries # 22,
Saint John, New Brunswick.
Edward Burtynsky.
Rock of Ages # 7, Active Granite Section,
Wells-Lawson Quarry, Barre, Vermont.
Edward Burtynksy.
Rock of Ages # 26, Abandoned Section,
E.L. Smith Quarry, Barre, Vermont.
Edward Burtynsky.
Across a Soil Trough,
Anu Mathur and Dilip de Cunha.
abstractions : paintings and drawings
further abstractions : photographs
Bibliography
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Image Credits
Robert Bourdeau, Adrien Hébert, Geoffrey James, Medrie McPhee: From Anne Newlands, Canadian Art: from Its
Beginning to the Present. Ontario: Firefly Press, 2000.
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Charles Sheeler: From Charles Sheeler: Paintings and Drawings.