By Anqi Shen
University Affairs
Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky is donating a portion of his work, spanning nearly five decades of his career, to Ryerson University. Some of his early images, selected by Mr. Burtynsky himself, are now featured in a virtual public gallery through the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC), while prints and materials from later years are in the process of being curated.
The 65-year-old photographer is internationally renowned for his large-scale landscapes depicting the impact of human industry on nature and the effects of climate change. While the collection at the RIC includes images that embody his iconic style, it also considers some of his earlier works that had a personal dimension, says the RIC’s director, Paul Roth.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreOn December 2, recent Ryerson graduate Cole LeGree chats with Ismaila and reflects on the donation of Burtynsky’s early archives to the Ryerson Image Centre.
Read MoreCBC Radio - As it Happens
Edward Burtynsky sees the world from a different vantage point than most of us — quite literally. The St. Catharines, Ont.-born photographer has spent decades taking bird's-eye-view shots of tailings ponds, sawmills, potash mines, and garbage dumps.
But long before those shots from the air, he was taking photographs at ground level in Toronto as a student at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, now Ryerson University. This week, Burtynsky gifted 142 of those early photographs to his alma mater.
It's the first instalment of his multi-year donation to Ryerson, where he began his career in the late 1970s.
He spoke to As It Happens host Carol Off about how a school assignment at Ryerson got him hooked on capturing how humans were bending nature to their needs. Here's part of their conversation.
Listen to the full segment here.
Read MoreBy Kate Taylor
The Globe & Mail
Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky is donating his archives to his old school, including even his student assignments. The Ryerson Image Centre announced Tuesday that the celebrated photographer is making a multiyear gift to the institution where he began his career in the 1970s, studying at the School of Image Arts at what is now Ryerson University. The gift will be made in several chronological parcels. The first part features 142 images made between 1976 and 1989, most not represented in public collections. These include early photographs of landscapes and city scenes submitted to his Ryerson photography instructors before Burtynsky achieved renown as a photographer of large-scale industrial landscapes. Later photographs of architecture and manufacturing include this image Holland Marsh, Ontario from the series Packing.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreNovember 24, 2020, Toronto — The Ryerson Image Centre (RIC) is proud to announce a multi-year donation of photographs by celebrated Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, whose iconic images have brought worldwide attention to the impacts of human industry on the natural landscape. The first installment of this gift comprises 142 photographs from the artist’s early career, a selection of which have been made public in a virtual gallery on the RIC’s website. Subsequent annual gifts will make the Toronto-based photography centre the most important global repository for the study of Burtynsky’s oeuvre.
Edward Burtynsky began his career in the late 1970s at the School of Image Arts of Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University). "It was important to me that my life’s work be housed in a Canadian institution, and it felt like a fitting 'homecoming' to entrust these works to the same place where I first developed as a photographer,” Burtynsky says. “The Ryerson Image Centre has become one of the leading museums in the world for photo historical research and has a growing collection of artist archives. I realized that there was no place I would rather have my work preserved and studied.”
Read the full press release here.
Read MoreBy Lucy Davies
RPS Journal
He is renowned for ambitious images that expose humanity’s impact on the natural world. Here the Honorary Fellow describes one of his most difficult shoots yet.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreRPS Journal
Acclaimed for his majestic views of our fragile planet, this renowned photographer has stared deeply into the natural world during lockdown.
Read the full article (pg. 694) in the November/December issue here.
Read MoreBloomberg Markets
Edward Burtynsky, Canadian photographer, joins BNN Bloomberg to talk about how the pandemic has impacted urban communities. He says that it will be complicated to see the future of cities as many people have moved away from urban centres with remote work amid the pandemic.
Watch the segment here.
Read MoreFuture Cities Canada
A Conversation with Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky and Globe & Mail visual art critic Kate Taylor kicks off the first week of Future Cities Canada: #UnexpectedSolutions, a six-week virtual city-building gathering showcasing the best-of in innovation in cities from across Canada and around the world. The free public talk takes place on Tuesday, October 20, 2020 at 10 a.m. and is the first of three new thought-provoking conversations presented as part of the TD Future Cities Speaker Series, a program supported by TD Bank Group through its corporate citizenship platform, The Ready Commitment. Launched in 2018, this series presents ideas from some of the world’s leading minds in urban systems; this year’s topics explore themes ranging from climate adaptability and placemaking to housing and infrastructure.
Read the full press release here.
Register for free here.
Read MoreThe Pictet Group
Found In Conversation (Podcast)
Can photography encourage sustainability? In this episode Renaud de Planta, Pictet’s Senior Managing Partner, explores the power of the image with Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, who has dedicated his life to documenting the impact of economies on the environment. This special episode is hosted by Isabelle von Ribbentrop, the Pictet Group’s Global Head of Branding, Advertising and Sponsoring.
Listen to the episode here.
Read MoreMetivier Gallery
Toronto, ON
On September 15 Edward Burtynsky and Marta Braun, F+PPCM Program Director at Ryerson University School of Image Arts, sat down at the Nicholas Metivier Gallery in Toronto to discuss Burtynsky’s latest body of work, Natural Order.
Read MoreBy Jessica Padykula
TRNTO
Much like the rest of us, photographer Edward Burtynsky found himself under lockdown as the Coronavirus pandemic took hold. And he used that time to turn his camera lens toward the world around him; specifically, Grey County, Ontario.
The photos taken during that time, shot using a new camera that captures remarkable detail and density, have come together in a new exhibition titled Natural Order that will make its debut at Nicholas Metivier Gallery this month.
This is not the first time Burtynsky has turned his lens on Grey County, having photographed the area in the early 1980s. His return to this subject almost 40 years later recalls Burtynsky’s earliest works as a photographer.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreRight now the message of Earth Day, on its 50th anniversary, seems more urgent than ever. There’s no doubt that the ravenous human appetite to conquer nature has compelled us to encroach on natural habitats and biodiversity in an ever-expanding way, and that this has led us to where we are today — isolated at home with a new pathogen determined to wreak global havoc. It seems the paradigm has shifted: where humans once had our collective boot on nature’s neck, we now find ourselves with nature’s boot firmly pressed against ours.
Gerhard Richter once said that “art is the highest form of hope” and my hope is that during this time in isolation I am able to create a suite of images, going back to my roots and looking at nature, with proceeds going directly to support the art sector in Canada.
The arts have taken an oversized hit during these times and will continue to suffer enormously because of this crisis. And yet, it is the artists, musicians, filmmakers and performers to whom we are all turning for catharsis, relaxation, distraction, entertainment and, perhaps most importantly, hope. Artists now need our support as much as we need theirs.
I do not know what the next few months will bring, but in this time of isolation and contemplation, I can be assured of one very important thing: the future of life on this planet rests in our hands. There may one day soon be a vaccine for this virus, but there is no vaccine for climate change.
Until such a time as life can return to something we are a little more familiar with, please stay safe and be well.
– Ed
Read MoreBy Edward Burtynsky
The Globe & Mail
It feels a little surreal to be commemorating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in the middle of this unprecedented global crisis. Admittedly, I had envisioned this day much differently, yet with COVID-19 forcing us all into isolation, the message of Earth Day seems more urgent than ever.
My 40-year career as an artist has taken me on a journey around our planet in search of the largest examples of human systems expressed upon the land and sea. I have been to many places that very few of us have any reason to go – the places where we wrest out the things we need from nature to propel our human destiny. My first trip to China in 2002 took me to Wuhan en route to photograph along the Yangtze River, where entire cities and landscapes were being commandeered and flattened to make way for the building of the Three Gorges Dam. So, when the pictures first emerged of the coronavirus lockdown in Wuhan months ago, never did I imagine seeing cities being shut down in this new and devastating way – or that we would soon experience this contagion all over the world.
There’s no doubt that the ravenous human appetite to conquer nature has compelled us to encroach on natural habitats and biodiversity in an ever-expanding way, and that this has led us to where we are today – isolated at home, with a new pathogen determined to wreak global havoc. It seems the paradigm has shifted: Where humans once had our collective boot on nature’s neck, we now find ourselves with nature’s boot firmly pressed against ours.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreVideo by Heather Sharpe and Laura Foster
BBC News
Edward Burtynsky travels the world trying to capture striking images of humanity's impact on the planet, from the fossil-like shapes left behind by drills in a Potash mine to the luminescent colours of lithium ponds.
The Canadian photographic artist has spent 40 years focusing on large-scale human activities such as mining, quarrying, agriculture and deforestation - but he says he doesn't see himself as an environmentalist.
His latest project, Anthropocene, is a collaboration with film-makers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, exploring the idea proposed by some scientists that a geological epoch shaped by human activity has begun.
It includes a travelling exhibition, a book and feature-length documentary, which was premiered last year in Canada and goes on theatrical release in the US next week.
Watch the video here.
Read MoreBy Amanda Hurley
CityLab
It’s summer, and for hundreds of thousands of Americans, that means at least one burger-and-bathroom break in Breezewood, Pennsylvania. This half-mile gauntlet of gas stations, fast-food outlets, and motels, its oversized signs towering above the surrounding countryside, is familiar to anyone who has to drive regularly from the East Coast to the Midwest or vice versa.
As the New York Times explained in 2017, Pennsylvania’s “Gas Vegas”sprang up because of an obsolete law. Breezewood is a deliberately awkward transition between Interstate 70 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike, where they (almost) meet. Back in the 1950s, as I-70 was being built, a law prohibited spending federal funds to channel drivers directly from a free road to a toll road. The law was later overturned, but to comply with it, highway planners designed a looping interchange that lets drivers avoid the turnpike if they (hypothetically) want to. From this constant stream of slow-moving traffic, a mega-rest-stop was born.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreBy Margaux Dussert
L'ADN
Les images du photographe Edward Burtynsky ont des allures de peintures abstraites. Avec elles, c'est la dévastation de la Terre par nos industries que ce dernier enregistre : une réalité de pétrole, de métal, de pelleteuses et d'épaves. L'anthropocène vu du ciel en somme.
J’ai toujours été frappé par ce paradoxe : nous sommes dépendants d’une foule d’objets issus de mines et d’usines, et pourtant, on ne voit jamais ni les unes, ni les autres.
Vous êtes né en Ontario, au Canada, une région marquée par sa dépendance à l’industrie automobile. Ce souvenir a-t-il été l’élément déclencheur de votre travail ?
EDWARD BURTYNSKY : Oui, je crois. Mon père travaillait chez General Motors. Le métal qui coule dans d’énormes cuves, les immenses machines... sont mes premiers souvenirs. Je crois que j’avais 7 ans. St. Catharines, où j’ai grandi, a toujours été un lieu de passage pour les porte-conteneurs. Ils y chargent et déchargent une grande quantité de matériaux en vrac. J’ai été exposé très jeune à tout ça, et j’ai rapidement compris comment ces industries fonctionnent, comment les matériaux nous parviennent, dans quels contenants…
Read the full interview here.
Read MoreWorld-famous environmental photographer Edward Burtynsky and IDEAS host Paul Kennedy both grew up in St. Catharines, Ontario. In fact, their childhood homes were less than 300 metres apart, and young paperboy Paul delivered a daily dose of newspaper comic strips to future visual artist Ed.
Paul and Ed lived parallel lives close to — but separate from — each other. When they eventually met in 2008, they talked about one day doing an episode of IDEAS, in which they'd return home to revisit their shared roots. Well, they did it: welcome to Paul and Ed's Excellent Adventure. The two made plans to visit the old GM plant on Ontario Street where both of their fathers had worked. The plant was bought by General Motors in 1929 to manufacture cars after World War I and was the largest employer in St. Catharines until its closure in 2010.
Listen to the full episode here.
Read MoreBy Michael Hardy
WIRED
NORILSK, RUSSIA, IS an industrial city of 175,000 people located 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, a place so far north that it is completely dark for two months every winter. Founded as a Soviet prison labor camp, an estimated 650,000 prisoners were sent here by Stalin between 1935 and 1956; 250,000 are believed to have died from starvation or overwork.
It’s a city abounding in superlatives: Norilsk is Russia’s northernmost, coldest, and most polluted city. Why would anyone choose to live in this former gulag? Because below the ground are vast deposits of some of the world’s most valuable minerals, including palladium, which is used in cellphones and sells for about $970 an ounce.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreBy Lauren Kelly,
British Journal of Photography
The Canadian native has captured some of the largest examples of extractions on the planet, set to be displayed at the National Gallery of Canada and Art Gallery of Ontario
“Most people would walk by a dump pile and assume that there’s no picture there,” says global industrial landscape photographer Edward Burtynsky. “But there’s always a picture, you just have to go in there and find it.” Born in Canada in 1955, Burtynsky has been investigating human-altered landscapes in his artistic practice for over 35 years, capturing the sweeping views of nature altered by industry; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, and silicon. “Of course, it’s important to me to make sure that my pictures are attractive to the eye,” he says. “But beneath the surface there’s always a bigger, deeper environmental issue.”
Read the full article here.
Read More