NEWS
THE LATEST BURTYNSKY NEWS
By Lauren Sproule
CBC News
On the second floor of the prestigious Saatchi Gallery in West London, small circular splotches of ruby, slate and marigold fill a large framed print hanging on the wall.
Passersby from a photography group remark that it looks like the work of 19th-century Austrian painter Gustav Klimt. But it's not a Klimt. In fact, it's not even a painting.
Read the full article here.
By Bethany Minelle
Sky News
Landscape photographer Edward Burtynsky's work explores human impact on the surface of the planet, shooting the Coast mountains in the Canadian province of British Columbia, soil erosion in Turkey, and coal mines in Australia for his latest exhibition, New Works.
Read the full article here.
De Donkere Kamer Podcast
Welcome to De Donkere Kamer, the podcast where we delve deeper into the world of art, photography and creativity. In this episode we have a special guest: Edward Burtynsky. We delve into his fascinating journey as a photographer, entrepreneur and environmentalist. From his first steps into the photography world to his groundbreaking projects around the world, Burtynsky shares his insights and experiences. We also discuss his latest exhibition about water that we are organizing in Knokke next summer, which is in line with his mission to increase awareness about climate change. Grab your headphones and join us as we chat with this inspiring renowned photographer.
Listen to the episode here.
By Joanne Shurvell
Forbes
Renowned Canadian photographic artist and filmmaker Edward Burtynsky has taken over two vast floors at London’s Saatchi Gallery to present Extraction/Abstraction, the largest exhibition of his 40 year career. His remarkable photographs and films of global industrial landscapes represent his dedication to bearing witness to the impact of humans have had on the planet.
Read the full article here.
By Irenie Forshaw
Elite Traveler
At first glance, it’s hard to figure out exactly what you’re looking at when confronted with one of Edward Burtynsky’s works. The large-scale pieces appear almost like abstract paintings: strikingly beautiful canvases streaked with colorful paint splatters and geometric patterns. Look closer, though, and you’ll see they are, in fact, breathtakingly detailed photographs of plundered landscapes. From the diamond mines of Botswana to the salt pans of India, every image delves into the (often devastating) impact of human activity on the planet.
I’ve come to the Saatchi Gallery for the Canadian photographer’s largest-ever exhibition – BURTYNSKY: Extraction/ Abstraction. Running through May 6, 2024, the show is set across two floors of the gallery and features 94 of his photographs, alongside a collection of murals and an augmented reality experience.
Read the full article here.
By Rachel Halliburton
Financial Times
The photographer’s spectacular images, on show in London, document the effects of human activity on the natural world.
Edward Burtynsky’s disturbingly beautiful photography brings a giant’s eye view to our ravaged planet, rendering mining sites as glimmering jewel boxes, desertscapes as geometric puzzles and dumping grounds as Jackson Pollock-like eruptions of chaos and colour. This fascinating exhibition covers his journey of more than 40 years — hanging out of Cessna planes, elevated by cranes and latterly deploying drones — to document the way large-scale industry and agriculture have impacted on the natural world.
Read the full review here.
By Ravi Ghosh
British Journal of Photography
Edward Burtynsky is standing in front of the most ambitious and labour-intensive photograph he has ever made. It is a blanket of golf-ball sized orbs and growths in pink, orange, green and brown, unfurling across an entire wall in London’s Saatchi Gallery.
Pengah Wall #1 is an underwater photograph – or rather, a digital image composed of around 200 individual shots – made off the coast of Komodo Island in Indonesia in 2017. Burtynsky stands back slightly and admires the coral, its fleshy, sprouting texture lending a sense of alien vitality. He mentions the work of painter Jackson Pollock; the idea was to emulate the motion and energy of his canvases in the image. “Abstract Expressionism was one of the things I loved in 20th-century art,” the Canadian photographer says. “That there is no singular central point in the images, and their all-overness, texture and modulation – the whole surface has been considered.”
Read the full interview here.
By Gege Li
New Scientist
Global warming means many of the world’s ancient rivers of ice will be gone within decades, threatening ecosystems that rely on their meltwater, a looming crisis that photographer Edward Burtynsky highlights in his work.
Read the full article here.
By Damon Embling
EuroNews Culture
Striking photos, murals and video footage from Canadian photographic artist Edward Burtynsky urge a rethink of our legacy on Earth, and the pursuit of a more sustainable future.
In this edition of CULT, Euronews reporter Damon Embling looks around a new exhibition at London’s Saatchi Gallery, which delves into the impact of humans on our planet.
Check out the full feature here.
By Sakchi Khandelwal
BNN
The 'Burtynsky: Extraction/Abstraction' exhibition at London's Saatchi Gallery captures the profound impact of human activities on Earth through over 90 large-format photographs. Edward Burtynsky's art reveals the abstract beauty and unsettling truths of industrialization, urging visitors to reflect on their ecological footprint and consider sustainable futures.
Read the full review here.
TimeOut London
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
All the things that make modern life tick – the mines for our batteries, the farms for our food, the abattoirs for our meat – are kept secret, out of view because they lay bare the damage we’re doing to the planet. Burtynsky’s vast, mega-scale photographs here at the Saatchi Gallery (there’s a concurrent, free, smaller show of his work at Flowers Gallery too) drag those private shames out into the open. He photographs salt marshes carving up the Spanish coastline, gold mines spilling cyanide into the Johannesburg’s groundwater, circular crops sucking Saudi Arabia’s aquifers dry, diamond mines leaking toxic waste into the hills of South Africa.
Read the full review here.
By Jasper Spires
FAD Magazine
Acclaimed Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has used his career as an artist to highlight and critique the impact of industrialisation on the natural world, and his latest showing at The Saatchi Gallery is no different. Extraction / Abstraction is the largest exhibition of Burtynsky’ work to date, capturing the overwhelming scale of his vision, and humanity’s changing environment. Working within the interplay of wild and post-industrial spaces, and how these shape not only the largest natural phenomenon on our planet, but the individual lives of human beings, the show is a stirring portrayal of the Anthropocene at its most striking and devastating.
Read the full article here.
Ben Smith
A Small Voice: Conversations with Photographers
In episode 224, Edward discusses, among other things:
His transition from film to digital
Staying positive by ‘moving through grief to land on meaning’
Making compelling images and how scale creates ambiguity
Defining the over-riding theme of his work early on
His relative hope and optimism for the future through positive technology
The importance of having a hopeful component to the work
How he offsets his own carbon footprint
Listen to the episode here
The Guardian
A huge retrospective of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky’s work showcases the terrifying, but oddly beautiful marks we can leave on the planet.
See the photo feature here.
By Chris Harvey
The Telegraph
“I use a digital camera in a helicopter or aeroplane,” says Edward Burtynsky. “It’s moving fast and it’s bouncy and shaky, and I’m taking hundreds of pictures, because if something comes your way and you don’t get it, you’ll never get back to it no matter how good the pilot is. You need to be ready to make that picture when it happens. If you miss it, that’s it.”
The 68-year-old Canadian photographer, the great chronicler of how heavy industry is transforming our planet, is at home in The Blue Mountains, Ontario, explaining how he went from setting up painstaking shots on a tripod with a large format camera like early pioneers such as Ansel Adams, to embracing new technology. “All of a sudden, it was eureka,” he says. Yet the precision he learned as a young man still informs every image, and it’s something that a generation that has grown up with camera phones wouldn’t understand. “In the late ’80s, it cost me about $60 to take one picture. I would walk around with an eight-by-ten camera, sometimes for two or three days, and not take a picture, if the light wasn’t right. But I would make notes: ‘OK, come back here at six o’clock’.”
Read the full interview here.
The Sunday Times Magazine
For more than four decades, the Canadian photographer has documented from above the extraordinary effect of man’s impact on landscapes.
View the full feature here.
By Noémie de Bellaigue
The Eye of Photography
The Berlin gallery presents a selection from series by the Canadian photographer produced on the African continent. Aerial views of breathtaking pictorial power which bear witness to the effects of industrial expansion on African landscapes while celebrating those still preserved from human exploitation.
How can we measure the impact of human activity on our planet, other than through data? How can we represent the damage caused by industrial activity, other than through images of devastation? How can we talk about Africa today other than through poverty?
For seven years, from 2015 to 2020, Edward Burtynsky explored ten African countries from the air – the aerial point of view being, according to him, the most powerful scale to reveal the immensity of his subject.
Read the full article here.
Il restera toujours la culture
Radio-Canada
Elsa Pépin, Audrey Martel, Heather et Arizona O'Neil proposent des suggestions littéraires; Mara Joly parle de la série Après le déluge; Marianne Desautels-Marissal et Émile Roy ont vu l'exposition Le paysage abstrait, d'Edward Burtynsky; L'écrivaine J.D. Kurtness revient sur son livre, La vallée de l'étrange.
Listen to the episode here.
CBC The Sunday Magazine with Piya Chattopadhyay
After more than 40 years photographing the industrial sublime around the world, Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky's new project brings him home to St. Catharines, Ont. He's taking an abandoned relic – a 68,000-kilogram sheet metal forge from the former General Motors auto plant, where both Burtynsky and his father worked – and turning it into a sculpture memorializing the industry and people that once drove life in his hometown. He joins Chattopadhyay to talk about his upbringing, the resource industries that define his career and his ongoing work to make his audience connect his beautiful images to the rapid destruction of our planet.
Listen to the segment here.
By Brenda Chávez
Rockdeluxe
Es una leyenda de la fotografía por haber documentado como nadie antes el efecto de la actividad humana sobre nuestro frágil planeta. Parte de su trabajo en países de África subsahariana, la exposición “African Studies”, puede visitarse en el espacio madrileño CentroCentro, dentro del festival PHotoEspaña, hasta el 1 de octubre. Hablamos con él sobre su implicación como artista entusiasta que observa todo lo que lo rodea como un dedicado guardián del medio ambiente.
Read the full interview here.
By Casey Beal
BESIDE Magazine
Edward Burtynsky’s award-winning, large-scale photographs illuminate the environmental cost and alarming beauty of human intervention in natural landscapes. We spoke with him about his artistic influences, human responsibility for the planet, and the great grief behind it all.
Read the full interview here.
By Chris Dart
CBC Arts
The super-producer's collaboration with Edward Burtynsky looks at humanity's impact on the world around us.
Ezrin is the co-producer of In the Wake of Progress, an immersive short film based on the 40 year career of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky. (The other co-producer is Burtynsky himself.) The film, which looks at the effects of resource extraction around the world, made its debut last year, and is currently the centrepiece of a Burtynsky exhibition called Le paysage abstrait, on now at Montreal's Arsenal Contemporary Art gallery.
Read the full article here.
FM 98.5
Columnist Fadwa Lapierre, who went to the Arsenal Contemporary Art to attend the exhibition The Abstract Landscape by the artist Edward Burtynsky, paints the portrait on Sunday, on the show Even le weekend.
“At first, we find it magnificent because they are landscape photos, but little by little, we realize the impact of humans on the environment, and therefore of our consumption.” – Fadwa Lapierre
Listen to the full interview here.
Culture Club, Ici Première
“An important, essential, disturbing exhibition. Everyone must go and see [it].”
Listen to the full segment here.
By Stéphanie Bérubé
La Presse
Heureusement, il y a l’art. « L’art peut éveiller les consciences, lance Ed Burtynsky. Et cet éveil est la première étape menant à un changement. »
Read the full article here.
By Stéphane Baillargeon
Le Devoir
Photographiés de très loin et de très haut par l’oeil unique du Canadien Edward Burtynsky, un étang d’eau salée du Sénégal évoque une toile de l’abstraction lyrique, le delta du Colorado fait immédiatement penser à une oeuvre de l’expressionnisme abstrait et d’autres prises encore de champs ou de mines, captées aux quatre coins du monde, rappellent les travaux de Clyfford Still, d’Hedda Sterne ou Adolph Gottlieb.
Read the full article here.
By Randy Renaud
CHOM 97.7
Bob Ezrin produced The Wall for Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel's debut album, Destroyer for Kiss, Alice Cooper's classic early albums, U2's latest album, as well as albums for Deep Purple, Rod Stewart, Jane's Addiction; and he dropped by the CHOM studios to discuss a new multi-media production that he is involved in, called Le Paysage Abstrait, at the Arsenal Contemporary Art Gallery all this month. Randy Renaud talks with the legendary Canadian producer about his remarkable career, and the many artists he has worked with, and Ezrin shares personal stories about Peter Gabriel, The Edge, and Pink Floyd, and reveals whether he is still friends with Roger Waters.
Listen to the full interview here.
By Ylenia Granitto
Olive Oil Times
The Sigismondo Castromediano Museum in Lecce, Puglia, will host the ‘Xylella Studies’ exhibition by the Canadian photographer and artist Edward Burtynsky, who has captured the disruption caused by Xylella fastidiosa in 12 large-format photographs and a video until September 10th.
The event is the result of a partnership with Sylva Foundation, a non-profit founded in 2021, aiming at the environmental regeneration of lands affected by Xylella fastidiosa through reforestation.
Read the full article here.
By Ellyn Kail
Feature Shoot
In his new book, Edward Burtynsky recalls photographing oil bunkering sites in Nigeria’s Niger Delta as a “transformative moment of consciousness”—one that demonstrated the true scope of the wounds we inflict on our planet. With refineries spread out across the land, swaths of the environment have been drenched in oil. As the photographer leaned out of a helicopter to take in the scene, surreal colors spread out before him, as far as the eye could see.
Read the full article here.
By Cecilia Pavone
Artribune
Costruire un nuovo ethos ecologico attraverso la testimonianza e la documentazione dei disastri ambientali provocati dall’azione antropica, per contrastare la crisi dell’abitare umano sulla Terra nell’era globalizzata dell’Antropocene. È questo il fulcro tematico dell’opera del canadese Edward Burtynsky (St. Catharines, 1955), fotografo di livello internazionale che ha vinto la XXV edizione del Premio Pascali con la mostra Xylella Studies, al Museo Castromediano di Lecce.Costruire un nuovo ethos ecologico attraverso la testimonianza e la documentazione dei disastri ambientali provocati dall’azione antropica, per contrastare la crisi dell’abitare umano sulla Terra nell’era globalizzata dell’Antropocene. È questo il fulcro tematico dell’opera del canadese Edward Burtynsky (St. Catharines, 1955), fotografo di livello internazionale che ha vinto la XXV edizione del Premio Pascali con la mostra Xylella Studies, al Museo Castromediano di Lecce.
Read the full article here.
PAST NEWSLETTERS
21/11/2023: ANNOUNCING BURTYNSKY: EXTRACTION/ABSTRACTION AT SAATCHI GALLERY
03/10/2023: FALL 2023
02/08/2023: SUMMER 2023
18/04/2023: SPRING 2023
07/02/2023: WINTER 2023
19/11/2022: FALL 2022
25/08/2022: SUMMER 2022
28/06/2022: EDWARD BURTYNSKY’S IN THE WAKE OF PROGRESS NOW OPEN
14/04/2022: SPRING 2022
1/03/2022: THANK YOU! EDWARD BURTYNSKY SELLS OUT SPECIAL EDITION RELEASE TO RAISE FUNDS FOR UKRAINE HUMANITARIAN RELIEF
26/11/2021: FALL 2021
24/08/2021: SUMMER 2021
15/06/2021: INTRODUCING EDWARD BURTYNSKY’S IN THE WAKE OF PROGRESS
11/05/2021: SPRING 2021
23/02/2021: WINTER 2021
23/10/2020: FALL 2020
18/08/2020: SUMMER 2020
11/08/2020: ANNOUNCING NATURAL ORDER
14/05/2020: SPRING 2020
19/02/2020: WINTER 2020
10/10/2019: FALL 2019
06/08/2019: SUMMER 2019
07/05/2019: SPRING 2019
12/02/2019: WINTER 2019
13/11/2018: FALL 2018
07/08/2018: SUMMER 2018
02/08/2018: ANTHROPOCENE at TIFF '18
22/05/2018: SPRING 2018
13/02/2018: WINTER 2018
16/11/2017: FALL 2017
09/08/2017: SUMMER 2017
02/05/2017: SPRING 2017
07/02/2017: WINTER 2017
02/11/2016: FALL 2016
04/08/2016: SUMMER 2016
03/05/2016: SPRING 2016
03/08/2016: Edward Burtynsky Receives Governor General's Award
10/02/2016: WINTER 2016