By Jeff Wall
with photographs by Edward Burtynsky
The Globe and Mail
The Port Weller dry docks are a marvel to behold: two rectangular gashes in the Earth, more than 225 metres long—like laying Toronto’s TD Bank Tower on its side. The bigger of the two, 24 metres across, is as deep as a three-storey house, its walls made of pockmarked concrete and dark corrugated metal. Monstrous double doors, like the gateway to a Tolkienesque fortress, keep at bay the flat, blue-green waters of the Welland Canal on the other side.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreBy Dawna Calleja
The Globe and Mail
This month, his work appears in our pages, too—and not for the first time. Our long-time photo director, Clare Vander Meersch, first met Burtynsky in the mid-1990s, at Toronto Image Works, the photo lab and darkroom rental facility he opened in 1985 and which became a hub for the city’s photographers, Clare among them. “Long before his work gained international recognition,” she says, “Ed was well known as an early pioneer of environmental landscape photography.”
Read the full article here.
Read MoreThe Current
with Matt Galloway
Edward Burtynsky is world famous for his monumental photographs that reveal in overwhelming detail the impact that human beings have had on planet earth. He has travelled all over the world documenting mines, quarries, recycling yards, tailings pods, refineries and factories — places that are essential to the modern world but few of us get to see. We talk about how his working class upbringing in St. Catharines, Ontario, working at General Motors, and in gold mines of northern Ontario shapes his art and how he wants Canadians to weigh the cost of industrial development at a time when major projects are under consideration.
Listen to the full segment here.
Read MoreBy John Geddes
Literary Review of Canada
In early 2008, the Globe and Mail published a series of aerial photographs of Alberta’s oilsands by Edward Burtynsky, who was by then internationally famous for his grandly scaled images of landscapes ravaged by humankind. Burtynsky was well aware that the beauty of his prints had previously raised unsettling questions about whether he was “trying to estheticize the devastation.” Not this time. As James King writes in his compelling biography, Burtynsky’s photos of the oilsands revealed “a grim, terrifying landscape of desecration.”
Read the full review here.
Read MoreBy Lana Hall
The Globe and Mail
The Ontario-born photographer traces the scale of industrial destruction across natural landscapes.
Read the full interview here.
Read MoreBy Kara Bischopink
Musée Magazine
Our footprints on the earth have evolved throughout the years, expanding into the movements, actions and technologies we produce that have forever altered our landscapes. Edward Burtynsky explores the imprint of industry on the land in his exhibition Recent Releases. On view until June 27th at Koch Gallery in San Francisco, the exhibition revisits much of Burtynsky’s early works that helped define the visual language of industrialized landscapes. As such, the exhibition explores the cross-decade dialogue between human intervention and the environment.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreOn the Coast with Gloria Macarenko
Edward Burtynsky is internationally recognized for his large-scale photographs of industrial landscapes and their environmental impact. Human/Nature runs from May 30th to August 1st at the Paul Kyle Gallery.
Listen to the episode here.
Read MoreArtnet News
“It is difficult to stand before these images for long without feeling that the old division between the human and the natural has become inadequate to the reality they disclose,” writes Diamond Zhou, the gallery’s assistant director.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreBy Andrew Kushnir
Kultura Rising
Two men discover that they speak in the same ‘photographic dialect’. Through their cameras, Edward Burtynsky and Maxim Dondyuk help us to behold the big and mind-boggling aspects of our humanity. And our mark on the world.
Listen to the full episode here.
Read MoreBy Ayşe Acar
Toronto Spark
Before my December trip to Türkiye, my dear friend Paul Kyle—owner of Paul Kyle Gallery in Vancouver—called me with a suggestion.
“Ayşe,” he said, “Edward Burtynsky has an exhibition in Istanbul. You’ve seen his work at our gallery. Please visit the show for us—and if you’d like, I can try to arrange an interview.”
The idea of interviewing a Canadian artist in Istanbul, on the land where I was born and raised, was deeply exciting—especially an artist I’ve long admired, someone who has dedicated his life to documenting humanity’s impact on the natural world.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreRight Eye Dominant
Edward Burtynsky is one of the preeminent photographers working today. For decades, his work has examined the human impact on the environment. By turns troubling and awe-inspiring, his large-scale images reveal a world in rapid transition. An illuminating and deeply engaging discussion.
Listen to the full episode here.
Read MoreBy Mike Balsom
Niagara-on-the-Lake Local
Edward Burtynsky’s In the Wake of Progress is a stunning distress signal for an Earth under threat by climate change.
As such, the 20-minute immersive film and sound experience acts as the perfect centrepiece to Art in Action: Climate, a 10-day event aiming to “illuminate the beauty and fragility of our planet,” while also reflecting on the cost of progress.
The St. Catharines native has spent four decades turning his lens toward the destruction wreaked upon the world by humans. Like his previous films—Manufactured Landscapes (2006), Watermark (2013) and Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (2018)—In the Wake of Progress, presents awe-inspiring visuals to sound the alarm on the profound and long-lasting effects of an ever-expanding population.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreYourTV Niagara
A 10-day experience that illuminates the beauty and fragility of our planet is underway at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in St. Catharines.
Watch the full segment here.
Read MoreBy Maryam Siddiqi
The Globe and Mail
Fishing and foraging, canning and gardening in Niagara’s fertile landscape. Biking to the Welland Canal to watch the ships go through. Working on car parts at the General Motors and Ford plants. Every one of these experiences influenced photographer Edward Burtynsky while growing up in St. Catharines, Ont.
Burtynsky now lives in Toronto, and left St. Catharines in the late seventies to attend university, but his hometown has stayed with him.
“A lot of what I’ve gone on to do in my life with my work has been informed in many ways by those formative years,” he says.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreSesaya Arts Magazine
By Scott Sneddon
Photographer Edward Burtynsky’s stunning pictures don’t just show the impact of humanity’s industrial footprint on our planet. They scale it to a register that feels uncanny, mesmerizing … even sublime.
With a Burtynsky photo, you find yourself staring, seduced by composition and rhythm and detail … only to realize, maybe with a shudder, that the subject is slag or oil sands tailings, feedlots or quarries. The renowned Canadian artist famously captures natural sites that have been transformed by industry. A globetrotter, he has made his way into famous, infamous, and sometimes jealously guarded sites here in Canada and the US, as well as in distant lands like China, Bangladesh, Italy and Australia.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreBy Asude Dilan Yiğit
Borusan Contemporary Blog
ADY: Another aspect of your work is that there is never a definitive distinction between what is “good” or “bad,” that’s at least what I have observed through your own statements. You do not aim to showcase a solution that is “right,” but rather try to provide a space for the viewers to carve out their own perspective on the current state of the earth.
EB: Yeah, I've always done that. I’ve always placed my work within an aesthetic engagement with the subject, trying to find a moment where that subject becomes visually intriguing. That's what pulls you to the image. Furthermore, the pieces are revelatory, not accusatory. As humans, we're changing the ocean temperature and acidity of the ocean. We're changing the atmospheric CO2 components. We're changing the earth through terraforming, through agriculture, and through deforestation. And through building towns on wetlands, and all the other things that we do, we're changing natural habitat at a frightening speed. So, we are now the top predator, and the Erosion project reflects this understanding that we are the managers of our future and of what we are passing on to the next generation. These acts of reclamation are acts of hope. All of these are potentially there to see in the images that I create. The landscapes can tell these stories, and the work is bearing witness to that, and evidence that human activity can have a positive future effect.
Read the full interview here.
Read MoreBy John Law
St. Catharines Standard
As an 11-year-old kid living in St. Catharines, Ed Burtynsky got his first camera and he recalls feeling “so excited” at the possibilities.
He would go on to traverse the globe as one of Canada’s most respected large-scale photographers, depicting nature transformed by the world we’ve created. He has won several environmental awards and was named an officer of the Order of Canada in 2006.
Read the full article here.
Read More