Manufactured Landscapes

The documentary, “Manufactured Landscapes” is intended to examine industrialization and globalization through photographs and videos of landscapes.  Edward Burtynsky traveled to China and Bangladesh to gather photos and video for his book and this documentary.  It features various places where the landscape has been changed by industrialization and it describes various substandard living conditions endured by the people living in these places.  While I will say that I agreed with some of the films message, for the most part I didn’t like it and was not particularly affected by it. 

My first issue with the film was that Burtynsky used China as an example to describe the rest of the world.  While no country is perfect, China definitely ranks low on the list as far as human rights and environmental protection goes.  I can think of no other country in the world where you are only allowed to have one child and where hundreds of thousands of people are forced out of their homes so that the government can build a massive reservoir.  It seems to me that this documentary wanted to focus mainly on environmental concerns that the e-metal, oil, and coal industries are causing in China but to me the most important issue is that of human rights.  I’m not saying that I don’t pity the people of China and similar countries and wish to help them, I just think it’s a bit of a hyperbole to compare them to the rest of the world.

At one point in the film, Burtynsky argues that China’s huge, unethical, and inhumane oil industry is caused by world demand.  He basically says that China has the last of the oil reserves and that the country will be shoved back into poverty when that runs out.  This claim is just plain false, the United States has 2.3 trillion gallons of untapped oil just waiting to be used (Political Vel Craft). Perhaps we could help the people of China by creating our own energy, instead of depending so much on theirs. 

The last point I would like to make deals more with opinion than fact.  To me, the documentary was slow-moving and the point the director was trying to make seemed very vague.  At first I thought the main focus was on the environment, but then the rest of the documentary focused on people.  It took me most of the film to realize what the author’s main point was, a strategy which in this case I don’t think was very effective.  There was very little talking in the documentary, instead it was just landscapes, silence, and people working.  While this can be a very effective way to approach a topic to some people, it was not a very effective argument for me. 

I appreciate Edward Burynsky’s work as a photographer, his pictures truly are beautiful.  It wasn’t the pictures or the people I had a problem within “Manufactured Landscapes”, it was the argument he tried to make with the pictures.  I think if he presented the argument in a different way, even if it was the same argument, the message would resonate a lot better with audiences.

Sources:

Political Vel Craft. March 2011. 30 September 2013.

 

 

The Faceless People

As I studied Salgado’s photographs this afternoon I stopped at a photo of two women whose faces were completely covered with a veil.  All women were forced to wear these veils when the Taliban took Kabul in 1995 (World Press).  They were also forbidden to leave their homes except to collect food and medicine.  These masks are just one example of the cruelty of dictators like the Taliban.

I chose this photograph because the masks have a symbolic meeting as well as a literal one.  Before Salgado came along all of these people in the photographs wore masks.  We knew they existed but we didn’t know who they were so they meant very little to us.  We hear about their sufferings in school, in the news, and in books but we are never driven to help.  Salgado’s photos give these people identities, it allows them to take off their masks.  Now we know who they are, will we still turn a blind eye?

Sources:

Salgado, Sebastiao. Migrations. pg 75. Paris: AMAZONAS, 2000.

World Press. Taliban Timeline. 2001. 23 September 2013.



The Salgado Project

Sebastiao Salgado is a Brazilian photographer who has made it his mission to spread awareness and concern about the plight of refugees around the world.  Over the course of seven years Salgado traveled to more than thirty-five countries to photograph people who had been forced to flee from their homes because of war or instability in their home countries.  He compiled the photographs into a book called “Migrations” and it is on that book, or more importantly the pictures in it, that I will base a majority of my posts. 

As I flipped through the pages of Migrations I couldn’t help but notice how many children were featured in the photographs.  One child stands in the middle of a field of dirt, the abandoned train that him, his family, and fellow refugees call home can be seen in the distance behind him.  He is living in the Ivankovo camp in eastern Croatia.  I was struck by the realization of how hard being a refugee must be on these young children; forced to leave their home and everything they know because of forces beyond their control. 

But despite the cruelty of their situation I still saw joy in the faces of children in other photographs.  Another photo, taken in the Nahr el-Bared camp near Tripoli, shows two children that appear to be dancing for the camera.  I was reminded by this photograph of the extraordinary resiliency of children.  They can always find a way to have fun in any circumstance.  By finding the joy in their life they have forgiven anyone who has ever wronged them; including us, who have sat in ignorance of their situation for far too long. 

The world is far too big for us to be aware of every cruelty that goes on in it, but Salgado through his photographs has taken away our excuse to be totally unaware of it.  Salgado doesn’t offer a solution to the problems he sees in the world, his goal is simply awareness.  But awareness is the most important step in solving any problem.  My purpose in sharing this information with you is also to spread awareness about these horrific situations so that we as a society can take the next step in solving these overwhelming issues. 

 

Sources:  Salgado, Sebastiao. Migrations. Paris: AMAZONAS, 2000.

 

 

 

 

 

 

God Grew Tired of Us

This semester in my writing class at BYU we are studying refugees.  As part of our coursework we were asked to watch the National Geographic film “God Grew Tired of Us”.  This is an award-winning film on the Lost Boys of Sudan; a group of boys who were forced to flee from their homes at a very young age because of the brutal civil war in their home country of Sudan.  Against all odds they made it to a refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya where they were given food, education, and, most importantly, safety.  Out of the 25,000 lost boys, 3800 were selected to relocate to the United States; the film follows three of those boys, now young men, who were selected to relocate.

I was especially inspired by John Bul Dau who was given the chance to relocate to Syracuse, New York.  He now has a college degree, has founded two separate organizations to help his fellow “brothers” back in Kakuma, and has written a book about his life story.  John was inspiring to me because he had the opportunity to create a better life for himself and those he loved and he made the most of it, even though it was a daunting task.  It wasn’t easy for him, he often worked two jobs to earn more money, but he never gave up or forgot where he had come from and those he had left behind.  He was able to locate his mother and bring her and one of his sisters to live with him in America, so you could definitely say his hard work paid off. 

How many of us have the opportunity to help others and we don’t take it?  How many of us when we hear a cry for help don’t take it seriously?  The cry for help around the world is real and we need to answer it as best we can.  There are countless amounts of people that are struggling and in need of help and what are we doing to answer them?  That is definitely a personal question because there are countless ways to help but one thing that I learned from this film is that none of us are justified in doing nothing.  We need to all work hard, like John, to create a better world for everyone in it. 

To learn more about the Lost Boys or the film ‘God Grew Tired of Us’ visit: www.godgrewtiredofus.com