I let this happen all the time. I get lulled into an ordinary routine where I’m too busy to actually think about anything beyond my immediate goals. So I forget about things, and it takes seeing (or even just re-seeing) something really dramatic to shock me back into realizing why I want to live my life the way I do.

I’ve known about his documentary ‘Manufactured Landscapes’ for a while, and even saw Ed Burtynsky speak at the ‘Worldchanging’ book launch tour last year (where was the post for that one? Ha!). The clips he showed from industrial China, especially combined with his personal narration, were pretty mindblowing. But it takes seeing a full 90 minutes of the stuff to really hammer it, uncomfortably, into your head. There’s even some comment on the perverse beauty that arises from it all, and when its framed so artfully, it’s hard to disagree.

It was especially poignant to watch after seeing a Chinese factory in person last summer, though the scale I witnessed doesn’t compare with the factories Burtynsky shoots. Even still, the scale of production was difficult to capture - part of the reason I’m glad I actually took a few panoramic scenes. I’ve even been inspired to sift through some of the other photos I took but didn’t post, and a couple are actually cool, so if someone reminds me I will definitely get on posting them.

Here’s some excerpted scenes from Manufactured Landscapes - watch the DVD if you can: