NEWS HUB

Human-altered landscapes: visions of the Anthropocene

By Zoë Ducklow
National Gallery of Canada Magazine

It was two years ago, while hovering over the Niger Delta in a two-dollar-per-second rented helicopter that Edward Burtynsky saw an oil-soaked scene of apocalyptic scale. Images of oily waterways flicker in dull rainbow hues; landscapes shine black and are littered with scorched trees; a boat speeds away from the helicopter. He had heard about oil theft in the petroleum-rich Nigerian delta, but looking at it from this vantage point, he knew it was something the world hadn’t yet seen.

“They are really tough images. They speak to a very challenging situation,” Burtynsky says. Nigeria has substantial petroleum deposits, with oil and gas pipelines dissecting the delta. Locals siphon oil from pipelines and crudely distill diesel and gasoline – profitable, marketable products. But over half of the crude oil needs sophisticated refining to be turned into anything useful. “They didn’t have a refinery. They couldn’t do anything with it. So they just poured it off on the landscape,” Burtynsky observes. It is unclear how much oil gets siphoned off, but the Nigerian government estimates 250,000 barrels daily, over half of which gets dumped. “These landscapes have oil just oozing out of them.”

The images Burtynsky made that day are one story in The Anthropocene Project, the third collaboration between Burtynsky and documentary filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier. (The two previous collaborations were the highly acclaimed Manufactured Landscapes and Watermark.) The project forms the basis of the National Gallery of Canada's multimedia exhibition Anthropocene, which brings together large-scale photographs, twelve film installations and integrated video displays, high-resolution murals and immersive Augmented Reality (AR) sculptures. A simultaneous, complementary exhibition is being held at the Art Gallery of Ontario and another showing will take place at the Fondazione MAST in Bologna next year, all being accompanied by a publication and TIFF 2018 premiere screenings of the film Anthropocene: The Human Epoch.

Read the full article here.

Anthropocene project highlights the apocalyptic beauty of humans' effect on the planet

CBC Radio: The Current

The burning of 10,000 elephant tusks piled into an enormous funeral pyres in Kenya's National Park in Nairobi is both a devastating and beautiful image to look at — a reaction that photographer Edward Burtynsky intended.

His photographs are part of a multimedia project called Anthropocene that merges film, photography and virtual reality installations to illustrate the imprint humans are collectively leaving on the planet.

"We want to communicate out there with people. We want them to look at these things, to try to ask questions about these landscapes," he told The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti.

"If you represent them in … an unsightly light or whatever, they don't resonate. They don't make us wonder about this place."

Read the full article and listen to the interview here.

Anthropocene reveals the scale of Earth's existential crisis

By Kevin Ritchie
NOW Toronto

Can a geological epoch become a household word?

For the last 12,000-odd years, the earth enjoyed the Holocene, the period of stable climate since the end of the last ice age. Nearly two decades ago, scientists popularized the term Anthropocene to describe the new period we are believed to have moved into – one in which human impact on earth has overtaken all other forces shaping the future.

“The word Anthropocene has been around for a while, but I thought, ‘What about trying to make that word enter the vernacular?’” says director Jennifer Baichwal during an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month. “Most people have no idea the scale of our impact. We are now a greater force than any other natural process, like earthquakes and tsunamis. We’re at a precipice here.”

Read the full article https://nowtoronto.com/culture/art-and-design/anthropocene-burtynsky-baichwal-ago/.

'Reconnecting us to the wastelands': AGO's new photo exhibit shows what humanity's doing to the planet

By Trevor Dunn
CBC News

A new exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario seeks to reveal the way human activity is transforming the planet.

Just how the cumulative action of seven billion people is shaping the environment may be difficult, if not impossible, to grasp.

But the oversized photographs by Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky have always sought to at least bring us a bit closer to that truth.

"These are human landscapes. We walk away and leave them as dead. But they are part of us and we need to understand them," Burtynsky said in an interview.

Read the full article here.

Apocalypse Now

By Mark Pupo
Toronto Life

Over the past 40 years, the photographer Edward Burtynsky has hunted down the world’s largest marble quarries, clear-cut forests and solar power fields. His super-sized shots showcase our ravenous appetite for Earth’s resources—Burtynsky is a war photographer of natural landscapes. For his latest project, Anthropocene, he reunited with his frequent collaborators, filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier. They travelled to 20 countries, collecting evidence of what some scientists call the anthropocene—a new epoch that began with the industrial revolution, maybe, or the nuclear bomb, in which humans took full possession of Earth. Burtynsky, characteristically, went big, producing a documentary that debuted at TIFF, a coffee table book and a multimedia exhibit, showing this fall at the National Gallery of Canada and the AGO. The result is urgent, edifying and technologically dazzling.

Read the full article here.

Living in the Anthropocene, the human epoch

By Alexandra Pope
Canadian Geographic

Climate change, extinctions, invasive species, the terraforming of land, the redirection of water: all are evidence of the ways human activity has shaped and continues to shape Earth’s natural processes.

Scientists have coined a word to describe this unprecedented age of human impact on the planet: the Anthropocene. Although not yet officially recognized as an epoch on the geological time scale, “Anthropocene” has been used informally to describe anywhere from the last 15,000 to the last 70 years of history — a period of significant and accelerating human-driven change.

The scale and consequences of our influence upon the Earth are explored in a groundbreaking new multimedia work by three award-winning Canadian artists — photographer Edward Burtynsky and filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier. Through film, photography, and cutting-edge augmented reality (AR) elements, The Anthropocene Project immerses viewers in the realities of our present age.

Read the full article here.

Cinefest: Stark warning amidst beauty

By Mary Keown
The Sudbury Star

There is a scene in Anthropocene: The Human Epoch during which a man nonchalantly jumps off the ladder of an excavator.

It is the largest excavator in the world and as the camera pans outward, you realize just how enormous this piece of equipment really is. This excavator, which resembles some kind of post-Apocalyptic nightmarish monster claw from the Mad Max films, is used in the coal mines of western Germany. It stands more than 300 feet high and 700 feet long. It weighs 45,500 tonnes and includes a dozen chassis. Reputed to be one of, if not the largest, land vehicles on earth, it is a sad testament to human innovation.

Read the full article here.

Anthropocene’s Three Filmmakers and Ecological Disaster

By Susan G. Cole
POV Magazine

Lights, camera, spectacular success – backlash. So it goes with the films co-created by Ed Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier. The trio is launching Anthropocene, the third in their eco-conscious trilogy that began with Manufactured Landscapes and continued with Watermark, which won the Toronto Critics Film Associations’s best Canadian feature award and $100,000 from media giant Rogers.

The new film, with research assistant from the Anthropocene Working Group and anchored by Burtynsky’s arresting photographic vision of the planet’s devastation at the hands of humans, makes the argument that we’ve moved away from the Holocene Epoch, when the forces of nature transformed our earth, to the Epoch of the Anthropocene, when major changes to our landscape are primarily wrought by man-made technologies and waste we are responsible for as human beings.

Read the full article here.

TIFF Review: ‘ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch’

By Patrick Mullen
Point of View Magazine

Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky, Nicholas de Pencier document the devastating consequences of human activity in Anthropocene. In a way, they’ve been documenting it for nearly fifteen years. Anthropocene is the third installment in the team’s epic trilogy of spectacular environmental essay films that began with Manufactured Landscapes (2006) andWatermark (2013). The latest film is the culmination of a major body of work and it’s as visually stunning and intellectually invigorating as the previous two films are. Anthropocene, admittedly, is also a film they’ve made before—although they’ve never quite made a film on such an astonishing scale as this one.

Read the full review here.

Anthropocene: The Human Epoch is Edward Burtynksy’s Devastating Call to Action

By Elizabeth Pagliacolo
Azure Magazine

Edward Burtynsky’s new doc (debuting at TIFF) and upcoming exhibition (at the AGO) make the case – through stunning photography – that humans are impacting the Earth more than all natural systems combined.

There is a scene in Anthropocene: The Human Epoch where the camera hovers on a concentric circular motif – a giant bloodshot eye, amidst an abstract swirl of red, blue, yellow, white. As the camera pulls back, the pattern fills the screen yet remains inscrutable. What are we looking at? Finally, zoomed away, we can place ourselves in the Russian potash mine, the circles on the labyrinthine walls are stamped by the boring machines that have sculpted this otherworldy landscape.

Read the full article here.

These photos show just how much damage humans have done to the planet

By Adele Peters
Fast Company

At the Dandora landfill in Nairobi–which officially shut down in 2012, but where people haven’t stopped dumping trash–some mounds made mostly of plastic bags rise 15 feet high.

In Edward Burtynsky’s new photo book, Anthropocene, the landfill represents the idea of “technofossils”–human-made objects, from plastic to mobile phones and cement, that will show up in the future fossil record. (Part-plastic rocks, dubbed plastigomerate, already exist.)

The book is part of a larger multimedia project, made with Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, called The Anthropocene Project, which also includes a documentary premiering today and a series of augmented reality experiences that will be part of museum shows opening on September 28. It all focuses on the Anthropocene, a term coined in 2000 to describe what some scientists argue is a new geological epoch shaped by humans as we transform landscapes, drive a sixth mass extinction, and change the climate.

Read the full article here.

Edward Burtynsky’s Anthropocene premieres at TIFF

By Jessica Wei
Post City Toronto

The renowned Toronto-based photographer Edward Burtynsky’s career has traced the movement of humans on this earth through the industrial footprint we’ve left on it. Now, his career culminates in his latest work, Anthropocene.

The new multi-disciplinary art, publishing and film project, in collaboration with director Jennifer Baichwal and cinematographer Nicholas de Pencier, encompasses a feature documentary premiering this year at TIFF, exhibitions at the AGO and the National Gallery in Ottawa and a new book.

Burtynsky has had a long and illustrious career tracking the visible ways that industrialization has impacted natural landscapes. He is known for his sweeping aerial shots of mines, quarries, railroads, and other markers of the industrial era. His last documentary, 2013’s Watermark, was made in collaboration with Baichwal and de Pencier, and focused primarily on the changing relationship between humans and the water that runs around us. Like most of Burtynsky’s work, it was mesmerizing in its imagery, with surreal shots taken high above Texas plains, at such an altitude as to render water table aquifers into abstract objects resembling cross sections of logs. Through his camera lens, river deltas stretch outwards like barren tree branches, and ponds of phosphor tailings ponds become sample cells on a microscope slide.

Read the full article here.

A Good Anthropocene

By Edward Burtynsky

As we get closer to the launch of the The Anthropocene Project it's important to acknowledge some of the positive stories that we've documented in the last few years, which have the potential to set us up for #AGoodAnthropocene.

But in the face of inevitable human influence on the Earth, what does #AGoodAnthropocene mean? It means a move towards sustainable solutions. It means actively reducing environmental pollution and degradation. It means a global, collective effort to live consciously and responsibly.

TIFF 2018: Will the wait be worth it for Dolan, Arcand and Burtynsky?

By Kate Taylor
The Globe and Mail

It takes money, time and persistence to get a movie made in any country but in Canada the task can feel like moving a mountain. I’m looking forward to the slate of Canadian films at the Toronto International Film Festival this year and in particular I am eager to see three titles with prolonged gestation periods. One was stuck in post-production for many months; another is the culmination of a director’s life work and the third … well, you could say it’s a project forged over the centuries.

That last one is Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, a non-fiction film by Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier arguing that we have entered a new geological epoch in which human activity is the main force shaping the planet. Massive-scale industrialization and development are now permanently changing the air, water and land.

Read the full article here.

The Haunting Snapshots of an Environment Under Siege

By 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.

Edward Burtynsky: The Anthropocene Project

By 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.

The Proust Questionnaire: Edward Burtynsky

The Proust Questionnaire started as a Late Victorian parlour game, aimed at revealing key aspects of a person’s character. While still in his teens, author Marcel Proust answered a similar series of questions with such enthusiasm that, when the manuscript containing his original answers was discovered in 1924, his name became permanently associated with this type of informal interview.

Read the Proust Questionnaire with Edward Burtynsky here.

edward burtynsky captures the 'human signature' of the proposed new anthropocene era

By Kat Barandy
designboom

this fall, the canadian photography institute of the national gallery of canada and the art gallery of ontario will co-present ‘anthropocene.’ these two new contemporary art exhibitions tell the story of the human impact on the earth and feature the work of photographer edward burtynsky.

in the year 2000, nobel-prize winning chemist paul jozef crutzen first popularized the term ‘anthropocene’ to describe a proposed new geologic era characterized by the evident ‘human signature’ on the planet. since then, the controversial idea has sparked a vigorous and passionate debate among an international group of scientists regarding the actual geologic credibility of the term. critics argue that while the proposition is eye catching, one cannot define a new geologic era without specifying its precise boundaries in the earth’s rock strata. this controversy surrounding the formal termination of the holocene and the beginning of this new ‘human epoch’ sparked photographer edward burtynsky’s ‘anthropocene project.’

Read the full article here.

Edward Burtynsky is one of the most interesting photographers of the built environment

I'm in a gallery looking at several enormous photographs, though it isn't clear that they are photographs, unless you look at the captions.

Some look like abstract expressionist paintings, swirls of paint dotted and dragged along a canvas, murky and intricate but completely without realism. But then I read the caption and it says "Phospor Tailings Pond #2, Polk County, Florida, USA, 2012", or "Dryland Farming #17, Monegros County, Aragon, Spain, 2011". And what looks like an art-brut rendering of a series of daggers is "Salt Pans #25, Little Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India, 2016".

In just a couple of photographs, you can clearly see traces of familiar objects – cars parked amidst reservoirs in the graph-like constructivist image of "Pivot Irrigation/Suburb, South of Yuma, Arizona, USA, 2011", or the clearly visible, if diagrammatic, pattern of descending paddy fields in "Rice Terrace #4, Western Yunnan Province, China".

They all look pretty, at first. But when you try and piece together what you're seeing, and try to relate it to any landscape you know, they're frightening.

Read the full article here.

Honorary doctorate for legendary St. Catharines photographer

By 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.