The Rhetoric of Seduction, the Aesthetics of Waste, and Ecopornography in Edward Burtynsky’s Shipbreaking

This article analyzes Edward Burtynsky’s Shipbreaking (2009), a controversial photographic project that inquires into the representation of environmental corruption and economic exploitation faced by disenfranchised communities. The controversy depends on the incongruity between the aesthetization of the gritty subject matter the photographs exhibit (the waste of the world and human waste) and the artist’s stylistic strategy, which may improperly be seen as an example of ecopornography.