NEWS HUB

The Great Acceleration: Human-Altered Industrial Landscapes, with Edward Burtynsky

B&H Photography Podcast

Industrial expansion has left an indelible mark on our natural world, fundamentally altering landscapes and ecosystems for the sake of material progress and modern convenience. This transformation has created an environmental challenge of unprecedented scale. In today’s show, we’ll connect the dots between the raw materials that make up our planet and the industrial forces visually altering our contemporary landscape in a chat with a photographer who’s documented these profound global changes firsthand for the past 50 years.

Listen to the episode here.

Read More

Edward Burtynsky: ‘My photographs are like Rorschach tests’

By Veronica Esposito
The Guardian

Few if any photographers have done more than Edward Burtynsky to shape our view of the large-scale industrial production that is a constant, ever-expanding part of the capitalist system. Since the 1980s, he has created more than a dozen multiyear series, tackling extractive industries like mining and oil refining in India, China and Azerbaijan, traveling to such disparate places as Western Australia, Chile’s Atacama desert and the so-called ship graveyards of Bangladesh.

Read the full article here.

Read More

Dramatic Edward Burtynsky image shows stark desert divide

By Simon Ings
New Scientist

There is no geophysical logic to the sharp partition in the middle of this picture. A US federal act, the Land Ordinance of 1785, divided North America’s vast western territories into rectilinear townships and sections. So when pumps pull water out of the aquifer beneath Salt River Valley, Arizona, squares of desert like this suburb of Phoenix grow green, settled and busy.

Read the full article here.

Read More

Edward Burtynsky | New Exhibition 'The Great Acceleration'

By Hailey Akau
Flaunt Magazine

New York City—the Big Apple, the city that never sleeps, perhaps even, a city among the greats on the world stage—becomes the focal point for contemporary photographer Edward Burtynsky’s return this summer with citywide programming centered on the artist’s climate mission. The International Center of Photography will exhibit Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration from June 19 to September 28.

Read the full interview here.

Read More

Edward Burtynsky’s photographs convey the force of mankind’s reordering of the environment

By Ben Sutton
The Art Newspaper

The Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has spent more than 40 years chronicling the many ways that humans have remade the natural landscape to suit their wants and needs. His work has taken him from greenhouses in Ontario, oilfields in Texas and suburban developments in the Arizona desert to e-waste recycling communities in China, shipbreaking yards in Bangladesh and clothing factories in Ethiopia. Now, more than 70 of his photographs from 1981 onwards are on view in Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration (until 28 September), a retrospective at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York curated by the centre’s creative director, David Campany.

Read the full article here.

Read More

A Conversation with Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration at ICP

By Ellen Cory
Musée Magazine

The Great Acceleration is Edward Burtynsky’s first solo institutional show in New York in over twenty years. It brings together more than seventy images that reveal how humans have transformed landscapes worldwide, showing both their fragile beauty and the urgent challenges we face. Curated by David Campany at ICP and opening on June 19th, the exhibition is a call to action that echoes ICP’s dedication to concerned photography. In this conversation, Burtynsky shares his perspective after decades spent documenting a planet constantly changing under our hands.

Read the interview here.

Read More

"A Paradox": The Dilemma Of Environmental Art

By Daniel Nash
Billionaire Magazine

How do you balance the need to show the realistic devastation wrought on the planet, with needing to create a work of beauty?

It's a paradox I've lived with for decades. The beauty is the hook. It draws people in. But then there’s the dissonance. Once you’re close, you realize the subject is industrial scars, mining pits, or polluted rivers. That moment of realization, that tension between form and content, is exactly where I want people to linger. The work isn’t about condemnation. It’s about comprehension. I believe beauty can be a powerful way to hold attention, to provoke thought, and to give difficult subjects a chance to be truly seen, even in domestic or personal spaces.

Read the full interview here.

Read More

Ten striking images of an Earth scarred by humans

BBC

Photographer Ed Burtynsky has been capturing the impact of humans on Earth for over 40 years. Here are ten of his most striking shots, from a shipwrecking yard in Bangladesh to rivers of iron dioxide in Canada. This June, the International Center of Photography in New York is dedicating a retrospective to The Great Acceleration, the seminal work of the Canadian artist.

Video by Anna Bressanin, filmed by Darryl Laiu

Read More