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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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Read MoreBy Virginia Lewis
Art in Action: Climate Blog
This January, when Burtynsky returns to his hometown, he and his work will take centre stage at Art In Action: Climate, showcasing a 40-year career that has earned photography exhibitions in over 80 museums around the world, a coveted spot in the International Photography Hall of Fame alongside inductees that include Ansel Adams and Annie Leibovitz, and a host of other honours.
“I think that kind of early exposure to both nature and industry really prepared me to venture into work that’s taken me around the world looking at how both industry and we as humans are shaping the planet.”
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Read MoreBy Karena Walter
St. Catharines Standard
World renowned photographer and St. Catharines native Edward Burtynsky wants to transform a 180,000-pound metal forge at the former General Motors plant on Ontario Street into a major public artwork for the city.
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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 Dan Dakin
The Brock News
Edward Burtynsky has gone around the world capturing remarkable images of humanity’s impact on our planet, and he doesn’t like what he sees.
His images appear in more than 60 major museums, including the Guggenheim, but Niagara is where the roots of his art were planted. It’s also where a large collection of his photographs can be found hanging in the Rodman Hall Art Centre.
Burtynsky was awarded an honorary doctorate from Brock University on Friday, June 8, and told the large group of graduands from the Faculties of Humanities, and Math and Science, that Niagara was where he first became interested in industrial landscapes.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreFriday, June 8, 10 a.m. — Edward Burtynsky, World-Renowned Photographer
His remarkable photographs of industrial landscapes have been included in the collections of more than 60 major museums around the world, but it was in his hometown of St. Catharines that Edward Burtynsky first learned his craft.
Known as one of Canada’s most respected photographers, Burtynsky was influenced early in his career by the images of Niagara’s General Motors plants. His images explore the collective impact we’re having on the planet, looking at the human systems we’ve imposed onto natural landscapes.
When he receives an honorary doctorate from Brock University on Friday, June 8, it will be Burtynsky’s eighth such degree.
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