Bryan Barcena takes a trip to Reno to review an exhibition of art and ecology and understand how it fits into the fractured ecology of the r
The following section, “Altered Lands and the Anthropocene,” devoted to landscape photography, proves unexpectedly sobering and sublime, and features works drawn mostly from the museum’s growing collection of art focused on the land. Among the offerings is Edward Burtynsky’s photo diptych Oxford Tire Pile #9a and #9b, Westley, California, USA, 1999, which captures an oceanic accretion of filthy discarded tires; Robert Adams’s Burning Oil Sludge, Boulder County, Colorado, 1974, depicting a vast landscape punctuated by oil derricks as a giant black plume of smoke pollutes the sky; and Rondal Partridge’s Pave it and Paint it Green, Yosemite National Park, ca. 1965, a picture of a parking lot choked by cars sitting in the shadow of Yosemite’s El Capitan. It feels incorrect to suggest that viewing these works incites pleasure. Yet each is so engaging in its framing, perspective, and depictions of the harm people have inflicted on the planet—it’s like watching a car crash, gruesome yet impossible to look away from.
