SHIPBREAKING

Since the late 1970s Edward Burtynsky has specialised in industrial landscape photography. For the series Shipbreaking he followed the dismantling of scrapped tankers and freight ships in Bangladesh. There in several months time the ships are taken apart by hand: hulls, bridges and metal lie along the coast like sometimes dazzling extraterrestrial objects. Shipbreaking provides many jobs and is the only source of iron, steel and copper in the country. But during the process oil and toxic substances are released that threaten the people and ecology of the coastal areas. Burtynsky (b. 1955) illuminates both sides of the story.