»No Man's Land

Edward Burtynsky in Charleston, as part of a three-man exhibit, "No Man's Land".

From the Charleston Net, reported by DOTTIE ASHLEY:

The term "no man's land" first was used to describe the ground between two opposing trenches during World War II and implied that neither side in the conflict was safe in this zone.

Landscape photographers Edward Burtynsky, Emmet Gowin and David Maisel believe there is a kind of trench warfare being carried out today between the environment and the demands of humans.

In their exhibit "No Man's Land: Contemporary Photographers and Fragile Ecologies," which opens Thursday at the Halsey Gallery of the College of Charleston, photographs reflect the results of years spent chronicling the state of the environment. The exhibit is said to exploit photography's power to entice the viewer to see the beauty and the fragility of the Earth, while illuminating seldom seen landscapes currently under siege by development.

Through their work, the artists say they wish to draw attention to the precarious, yet interdependent nature of our relationship with the Earth.

"Initially, their works draw us in by the seductive beauty of the photographic print itself; it is only after this initial reading that we begin to comprehend the content of each image," says Mark Sloan, director of the Halsey Gallery.

The photographs will be on display Thursday through Oct. 16 at the gallery in the Simons Center for the Arts, 54 St. Philip St. A reception honoring the photographers will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. Sept. 17 in the gallery.

That same day, Gowin will lecture on his work in the Recital Hall of the Simons Center at 2 p.m., followed by Burtynsky at 4 p.m. and Maisel at 6 p.m. All events are free.

For 25 years, Burtynsky, a Canadian, has explored obscure sites where industrial activity has reshaped the surface of the land. His surveys of the man-made terrain of quarrying, mining, rail cutting and oil refining are said to remind us that these incursions into the land arise from human needs and desires.

Recently, Burtynsky photographed the world's largest engineering and construction site, the Three Gorges Dam project along the Yangtze River in Hubei Province in China. His work focuses on the explosive growth of Chinese industrial sectors and the resulting transformations of landscape as that country evolves from rural agricultural to urban technology.

For more than 20 years, Gowin has taken aerial photographs of the landscape in the United States, Mexico, Czechoslovakia, Asia and the Middle East. In his collection, the viewer witnesses how man's footprints have visually scarred and continually altered Earth's surface. His most recent book is "Changing the Earth," (Yale University Press, 2002). His work will be shown at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Yale University Art Gallery and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, among other galleries.

The work of San Francisco artist Maisel also is composed of aerial photographs of environmentally impacted landscapes. Looking down on these damaged wastelands where man's efforts have eradicated the natural order, one sees that the views are spectacular and horrifying. One series of images shows Owens Lake, the site of a formerly 200-square-mile lake on the eastern side of the Sierra Mountains. The diversion of the Owens River into the Owens Valley Aqueduct began in 1913 to quench the thirst of the citizens of Los Angeles. By 1926, the lake was in essence destroyed, with vast expanses of mineral flats exposed.

The photographic exhibition is accompanied by a catalog.

Halsey Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday.