By Charlotte Metcalf
Country & Town House
Having seen Edward Burtynsky’s recent retrospective at the Saatchi Gallery, I am eager to meet him. When he arrives, he appears upbeat for someone who has spent much of his life creating images out of the catastrophically destructive impact of industrialisation.
From a distance many of his images look like huge, beautiful, expressionist paintings. Move closer and you see they are photographs, which appear to have been taken from miles up, showing landscapes decimated by humanity’s activity – logging, mining, quarrying, railways, rubbish dumping, ship-breaking, intensive agriculture, building. The beauty he finds in destruction comprises the central ambiguity at his work’s core, imbuing it with persuasive power that urges us to take the necessary drastic action to save our planet.
Read the interview here.
Read MoreBy Katherine Ylitalo
Galleries West
“If you are going to have only one Burtynsky book, this is the one.” Upon this recommendation from a knowledgeable friend, I dove into the latest book on the work of world-renowned Canadian photographer, Edward Burtynsky. The new take on his 45-year career accompanies the exhibition Edward Burtynsky: Extraction/Abstraction at the Saatchi Gallery, which was shown Feb. 14 to May 6, 2024, in London, and will travel to Italy later this summer.
Read the full review here.
Read MoreThe Oldie Podcast
Charlotte Metcalf is a journalist, editor, award-winning documentary film-maker and was co-presenter of the Break Out Culture podcast. She is Subscriptions Editor and a frequent contributor at The Oldie.
Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian artist and photographer and award-winning film-maker. A recent major retrospective at London’s Saatchi Gallery showed his large format photographs, many vast, of industrial landscapes all over the world. While they resemble beautiful abstract paintings, they depict industrialisation’s devastating impact on nature and human existence.
Listen to the episode here.
Read MoreBy Asmaa Toor
TMU The Creative School
The Creative School's renowned alumnus and Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky displayed his exhibit Extraction / Abstraction at Saatchi Gallery in London, UK. The exhibition, which ran from mid-February to early May, featured 94 of Burtynsky’s large-format photographs as well as 13 high-resolution murals, and an augmented reality (AR) experience.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreGlobal TV Vancouver
The powerful images captured by an award-winning Canadian photographer are raising attention to the human-cause damage to the planet. Edward Burtynsky talks about his latest show and what he hopes to accomplish with it.
Watch the interview here.
Read MoreBy Matt Growcoot
PetaPixel
Photographer Edward Burtynsky has spent his career capturing stunning large format photographs that — despite their beauty — actually show the damage that’s being done to the planet.
His incredible photographs are currently on exhibit at the Saatchi Gallery in London where he is making use of large format by displaying enormous prints of his arresting work.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreBy Helen Gordon
Apollo Magazine
Crawford Lake is around an hour’s drive from Toronto, home of the photographer Edward Burtynsky. Scientists studying sediment layers in the lake have found samples of plutonium from hydrogen bomb tests, carbon particles from fossil fuel burning and nitrates from the mass application of chemical fertilisers. Some want the lake to become an international reference point marking the dawn of the Anthropocene – the period when the human species began to alter the planet irrevocably, becoming a geological force comparable to immense volcanic eruptions or the variations in the Earth’s orbit that drive glacial cycles.
Like these scientists, Burtynsky has long been fascinated by the effects of large-scale human activity on the landscape, especially industry and agriculture. His Anthropocene series (2012–17) and accompanying documentary of 2018 did much to popularise the term beyond the scientific community, and ‘Abstraction/Extraction’ – his sumptuous, thoughtful new retrospective at the Saatchi Gallery – continues this line of inquiry.
Read the full review here.
Read MoreIsa Soares Tonight
CNN
CNN's Isa Soares speaks with photographer Edward Burtynsky about his exhibit at Saatchi Gallery, London on climate change, which highlights nature's beauty and our destruction of it.
Watch the full interview here.
Read MoreBy Maria Shollenbarger
FT How to Spend It
Where to focus, from Berlin to San Francisco.
Check out the full list here.
Read MoreBy 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.
Read MoreBy 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.
Read MoreBy 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.
Read MoreBy 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.
Read MoreBy 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.
Read MoreBy 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.
Read MoreBy 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.
Read MoreBy 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.
Read MoreTimeOut 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.
Read MoreBy 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.
Read MoreBen 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
Read More