Disaster Topographics examines the photographic
representation of time, history and disaster in the
recent work of contemporary photographers
Edward Burtynsky, David McMillan and Hiromi
Tsuchida. A common element in each
photographer’s work is the use of the ‘before and
after’ photograph in the representation of disaster.
Such photographs are often employed to show a
return to normalcy for a society that is growing
increasingly fearful. For example, shortly after the
destruction of the World Trade Centre on
September 11, 2001, Time Magazine ran a series
of before and after photographs. Individuals
caught in the disaster of 9/11, and photographed
by journalists under a cloud of dust and gloom
were re-photographed from the consolatory
vantage point of the 9/11 survivor. The artists in
Disaster Topographics offer no such resolution
and depict sites in which the disaster is either
unstoppable, growing or where the evidence of
social recovery marks its own disaster of
forgetting.

Curated by Blake Fitzpatrick