NEWS HUB

Edward Burtynsky: Extraction/Abstraction at the Saatchi Gallery

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.

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Ep. 224 - Edward Burtynsky

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

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Edward Burtynsky Interview: The photographer – a great chronicler of how Earth has been poisoned by heavy industry – sees danger in over-politicising climate change

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.

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Catch-up from September 20, 2023: The exhibition The abstract landscape and the novel The Uncanny Valley

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.

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How Edward Burtynsky's industry roots shape his perspective on art

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.

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Edward Burtynsky, el fotógrafo del Antropoceno

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.

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How Edward Burtynsky Shows Us Who We Are

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.

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Bob Ezrin wants you to rethink consumer culture

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.

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We are gradually realizing the impact of humans on the environment

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.

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«Le paysage abstrait»: Edward Burtynsky, une abstraction lyrique engagée

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.

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LEGENDARY RECORD PRODUCER BOB EZRIN DROPS BY CHOM

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.

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Art Exhibition Reflects on Xylella's Devastating Impact

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.

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Edward Burtynsky Reveals the African Landscapes We Never See

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.

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Il disastro della Xylella negli scatti sugli ulivi di Edward Burtynsky

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.

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New Equipment Developed by Edward Burtynsky to Scan Major Photo Collection

Galleries West

The Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University will digitize 25,000 press photographs of Canadian events, speeding the normally laborious work with an innovative machine developed by Toronto photographer Edward Burtynsky.

Burtynsky says a vast array of stunning photographs at various institutions languish in dark boxes in temperature-controlled storage with no public access. 

"It's a thrill to finally be able to initiate an effective and innovative solution to this problem and bring this important photographic history into the light," he says.

Burtynsky has assembled a team of hardware and software developers to digitize the images with his equipment, known as ARKIV360, along with their folded captions, tear sheets and attached ephemera.

Read the full article here.

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The Image Centre receives $300,000 grant from the Department of Canadian Heritage to digitize collection of 25,000 press photographs

The Image Centre
Toronto Metropolitan University

Innovative ARKIV360 machine, developed by famed photographer Edward Burtynsky, will be used to scan The Image Centre’s Rudolph P. Bratty Family Collection and make it accessible in an online database. 

Toronto, ON – The Image Centre (IMC) at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) is pleased to announce that the Department of Canadian Heritage has granted over $300,000 to support the digitization of the IMC’s Rudolf P. Bratty Family Collection of press photographs drawn from the New York Times Photo Archive. 

This funding was issued through the Digital Access to Heritage component of the Museums Assistance Program (MAP), which provides support to heritage organizations to digitize collections, develop digital content and build their capacity in these areas. 

Read the full announcement here.

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Photographer Edward Burtynsky brings in high-tech scanner to help digitise Inuit art

By Larry Humber
The Art Newspaper

A trove of Inuit art—some 89,000 drawings in all—was created in Cape Dorset (now Kinngait) near the southern tip of Baffin Island between 1950 and 1980, providing a way for the community in Canada’s remote Nunavut territory to generate income. But very few of those works have seen the light of day through the issuing of limited-edition prints, with the Toronto market very much in mind.

After a devastating fire destroyed a similar archive in a nearby Arctic community, the Ontario-based McMichael Canadian Art Collection moved to acquire the Cape Dorset drawings in 1990, giving them a secure home. “Inuit art was always folded into our national identity,” says Sarah Milroy, the McMichael’s chief curator, making the acquisition an obvious move.

Read the full article here.

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