Oil Spill #10, Oil Slick, Gulf of Mexico

Edward Burtynsky, Canadian

Oil Spill #10, Oil Slick, Gulf of Mexico, 2010

Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian photographer whose work demonstrates how industry and the human population is transforming nature. His photographs highlight how humans have worked the earth for their own advantage, manipulating its resources and destroying it in the process. Burtynsky’s print, Oil Spill #10, Oil Slick, Gulf of Mexico, June 24, 2010, is an aerial photograph that embodies the deadly scale of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Burtynsky includes the sky in his composition, potentially implying how the world continued on while the worst oil spill in history occurred. The dark oily ribbons streaked across the seascape for miles, overpowering and enveloping the clear water while leaving behind a trail of murky water. Burtynsky arranges the shot so the oil ridden water is more than half of the composition, displaying how fossil fuels are a source of energy and destruction. Label by Elsa Rall

Drop the Shell, from Prestige to Disgrace

Fossil Free Culture NL Dutch Artist Collective, est. 2017

Drop the Shell, from Prestige to Disgrace, 2017

On May 12th, 2017, seven women from the Dutch artist collective Fossil Free Culture performed Drop the Shell for unwitting visitors in the entrance hall of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The museum’s sponsorship by Royal Dutch Shell, the multinational oil company headquartered in the Netherlands, was the subject of their protest. The women each held a scallop shell filled with a thick black liquid resembling oil. While one woman recited an excerpt from one of Van Gogh’s letters, the others sipped the liquid from the shells, then allowed it to drip from their mouths and onto their white dresses and the floor. A spokesperson who informed museum security about the intention and non-violence of the performance was arrested alongside the seven performers. Amid public outcry the museum dropped its charges against the activists and they were later released. The Van Gogh Museum would drop Shell as a sponsor the following year. Label by Sarah Roberts

Will Their Children Live Under a Glass Bulb? (2)

Paul Willem Seghers, Belgian

Will Their Children Live Under a Glass Bulb? (2), 1968

n 2020, the reach of Big Oil into day to day life has grown more pervasive than ever. As we see the intersection of Big Oil reach further and further into the structure of our society with sponsorship and monopoly, we are faced with many questions about what the future will look like for the youth if changes are not made. This piece speaks to this very concern in 1968, depicting two young boys playing on a pipe with smoke stacks billowing out of factories behind them. Their smiling faces and playful demeanor speak to their indifference and lack of concern for the environmental impacts of what they physically stand on. They are on a playground in their minds, and the title begs the question of what will happen as they age. Within the simple joy in their faces, we as the viewer are asked to consider a more sinister view of the image. The pipes and billowing smoke stacks do not concern them, but they should, and in addition, they should deeply concern the viewer. We cannot be as blissful as the children in the image are, and their joy is more discomforting than it is comforting. Label by Gwyneth McCrae

Blue Marble—Image of Earth from Apollo 17

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), American

Blue Marble—Image of Earth from Apollo 17, 1972

An ecocritical description of NASA’s Blue Marble encourages the viewer to consider what is materially related to— even if visually absent from—this image of Earth. This photograph seems to bear no sign of humanity; the camera’s distance from the object hides the roads, factories, and cities that are actually there. Yet the creation of an image of Earth, from beyond Earth, but distributable and visible on Earth can only be human. In addition to “photograph” as medium, the curation for Blue Marble might as well list the Cold War and the Apollo rocket’s burning of fifteen tons of kerosene per second as essential elements in the image’s production. Label by Hannah London