NEWS HUB

The photographer sizing up the planet’s human footprint

By Leslie Hook
Financial Times

The word “ Anthropocene” first entered popular use about 20 years ago as scientists looked for a way to describe a new geologic era, one defined by the impact of humans. Earlier eras have been linked to climatic shifts caused by asteroids or ice ages, but now it is human activity that is reshaping the Earth.

That is the theme that Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has taken for a new project that spans the globe, chronicling natural and unnatural worlds. His focus is on the indelible human fingerprint on the planet — whether in tunnels, dams, mines, forests or megacities.

“These landscapes are human landscapes,” he explains. “We need to own these landscapes, they are ours — they are not some bad corporation’s landscapes — they are our landscapes. There is an urgency for all of us to own the problem.”

Read the full article here.

‘It’s hard at this particular moment to be optimistic’ – Edward Burtynsky on the future of the planet

By Fatema Ahmed
Apollo Magazine

The Canadian photographer talks to Fatema Ahmed about The Anthropocene Project – two exhibitions, a film and a book exploring man’s effect on Earth and capturing the spirit of what some scientists consider to be a new geological epoch.

When did you become interested in the Anthropocene, and how did this project with the film-makers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier come about?
In 2010 or even earlier I was in a National Geographic article about the Anthropocene, which was where I first heard the word – the whole magazine was devoted to water. And then Jennifer said, hey, what about making it a better-known word, because the word packs a lot of ideas into it? One of the core ideas is the existential threat to not only humans, but all other life forms on the planet. The Anthropocene doesn’t necessarily have to end in a negative way – we both agreed at the time that we shouldn’t paint this as the end of the world as we know it. It could be an epoch with a reasonable outcome if we can get our act together, or it could be a terrible one. We wanted to keep that open-endedness in all our thinking in the design of the project.

Can you explain the different elements that make up the project?
From the outset, we knew that it would be an exhibition, that it would be a book and it would be a film, because that’s what we did with Watermark[2013]. The new thing we added was that whereas before I was brought into [Baichwal’s and de Pencier’s] world of film, this time I’m bringing them into the world of art, the museum world. They’ve done some museum work in the past, but now it’s going to be a much more engaged stage for them, with video installations. We’ve also worked with augmented reality and a lot on virtual reality.

Read the full interview here.

Anthropocene film captures a world of devastation

By Mike Devlin
Times Colonist

A new documentary from a team that includes acclaimed director Jennifer Baichwal looks at the impact modern civilization has had on Earth over thousands of years, and the results aren’t pretty.

There have been significant hydrologic, atmospheric, biospheric and geological shifts during the Holocene period, most of which have been brought about by humankind. The effect on every system of Earth has been profound.

Scientists believe we have moved past the 12,000-year-old Holocene to the Anthropocene, the current geological timescale in which climate change and global warming have become daily concerns.

Terraforming, the act of altering Earth’s surface for human need, forms the framework for Baichwal’s Anthropocene: The Human Epoch. Among some of the film’s most shocking scenes — from the city of Norilsk, Russia’s most polluted city, to Chile’s Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth — are shots of the heavily logged land just outside Port Renfrew.

“We’re all implicated in all of these landscapes,” Baichwal, who was raised in Victoria and graduated from the University of Victoria, said from her home in Toronto.

Read the full article here.

Interview: Edward Burtynsky Finds New Perspectives on the Anthropocene

By Rachel MacFarlane
FORMAT Magazine

The renowned Canadian photographer discusses his latest work, which uses AR, film, and photography to document environmental change.

October has been a busy month for Edward Burtynsky. Most significantly, the Canadian artist released a new series of his photographs, titled Anthropocene, on until November 3 at Toronto’s Nicholas Metivier Gallery. With collaborators Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, he also launched the traveling museum exhibition Anthropocene at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and his latest feature length film Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, which is playing at TIFF theaters until October 11th.

Burtynsky is best known for his aerial photography which captures the societal and ecological effect of human systems on the earth, ideas he’s expanded on in previous documentaries Manufactured Landscapes (2006) and Watermark (2013).

We got in touch with Burtynsky to learn more about the Anthropocene Project, and how it revisits themes and locations explored in his earlier works.

Read the full interview here.

Huge fossil-like scars of the Anthropocene mark walls of Russian mine

By Simon Ings
New Scientist

THE lasting geological impact of our species is clearly visible within the galleries of this potash mine in Russia’s Ural mountains. The Urals contain one of the largest deposits in the world of this salt, one of the most widely used fertilisers. Mining has left behind vast subterranean galleries, their walls machine-carved with enormous ammonite-like whorls.

The Canadian photographer and artist Edward Burtynsky took this photograph for The Anthropocene Project, a collaborative chronicle of geologically significant human activity such as extraction, urbanisation and deforestation.

Read the full article here.
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What happens when humans rule the Earth: Documenting the Anthropocene

By Collin Ellis
TVO

The trio of filmmakers behind the documentaries Manufactured Landscapes (2006) and Watermark(2013) are back with the visually stunning and sobering Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, which chronicles the impact human activity has had on the planet. An accompanying exhibition will run at the Art Gallery of Ontario until January 6.

We sat down with Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky, and Nicholas de Pencier at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. For the full interview, stay tuned for the new weekly TVO podcast On Docs, which will launch October 25.

What does the word Anthropocene mean?

Jennifer: Anthropocene is the proposed name of our current geological epoch. There's a group of scientists and geologists called the Anthropocene Working Group that has been gathering evidence for 10 years to determine if humans change Earth systems more than all natural processes combined, and their research is showing that that is, in fact, the case. So we are in a time in the Earth's history when humans as a species — although we've only been around 10,000 of 4.5 billion years — have tipped the planet outside its natural limits.

Read the full interview here.

ANTHROPOCENE EXAMINES THE SHOCKING IMPACT HUMANS HAVE ON THE EARTH

By Truc Nguyen
NUVO Magazine

This month, Anthropocene—a photography and multimedia art exhibition from artists Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal, and Nicholas de Pencier—opens simultaneously at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada, the first time the two museums have offered concurrent, complementary shows from the same artists. The Anthropocene Project also encompasses a feature documentary film arriving in theatres next month, a hardcover book from Steidl, and an exhibition of photographs by Burtynsky at the Nicholas Metivier Gallery in Toronto.

An endeavor for which the artists travelled to 46 different locations in 20 countries over the last four years, visiting every continent except Antarctica, the project aims to document and highlight the effect of human activity and industrialization on our planet. “Anthropocene is a word that was coined in 2000 by Paul Crutzen, and it’s a word that tries to describe what humans are doing to the planet, that we’re shifting the planet into another geological epoch,” explains Burtynsky. “Geologists are trying to tell us that we’re actually now a planetary force as a species; all of the work, whether it’s deforestation, or mining, or quarries, or farming, all of these things are key drivers of tipping us into this other state.”

A collaboration between photographer Burtynsky and filmmakers Baichwal and de Pencier, Anthropocene is a follow up to their previous films and creative projects, Manufactured Landscapes (2006) and Watermark (2013). Using both traditional photography processes and newer technology such as augmented reality and satellite imagery, the AGO exhibition showcases sites of human activity and environmental degradation as varied as the burning of a mound of confiscated ivory tusks in Nairobi, a clearcut forest on Vancouver Island, and a potash mine in Russia.

Read the full article here.

Beautiful pictures of terrible things

By Liz Braun
Toronto Sun

The end of the world is beautiful to look at.

See for yourself at Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, a new film that offers magnificent pictures of the mess humans have made on this planet.

Anthropocene is the name of the current geological age, a period in which the dominant influence on the environment is human activity.

Documenting that activity are filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nick de Pencier, and photographer Edward Burtynsky. Anthropocene: The Human Epoch is their third film together after Manufactured Landscapes (2006) and Watermark (2013).

They visited six continents and 20 countries to create this film and a complementary exhibition open now at Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery in Ottawa. (The exhibits include stunning new photographs from Burtynsky, film installations from Baichwal and de Pencier and some frankly astonishing 3D virtual reality experiences — such as a visit with the very last Northern White Rhino, now extinct.)

Read the full article here.

Sprawling Anthropocene project shows humanity’s enormous impact on the planet

By Murray Whyte
Toronto Star

The camera sweeps slowly, right to left, along a towering ridge of ochre stone. The sense is of the monumental — the kind of majesty and scale that only the primal force of violent nature, operating at planetary scale, could yield.

Then you see it, and the world turns suddenly sideways: An enormous, churning machine enters the frame, like some kind of apocalyptic ferris wheel, carving grooves into the cliffside with its set of jagged claws. That towering bluff of dusty earth seems to shrink before your eyes as it yields to the clanking monstrosity gnawing at its hide.

But it’s not the only thing taking a hit here. That built-in sense of feeling tiny and insignificant in the face of nature’s grandeur has been turned thoroughly upside-down. As the scene makes clear, the dominant force shaping the planet at is most colossal scale is now us.

That’s the shorthand version of the thesis for Anthropocene, a film and a set of sprawling exhibitions — one at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the other at the National Gallery of Canada — that opened simultaneously this weekend. Taken together, they’re a full-blooded collaboration from photographer Edward Burtynsky and the filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, which, while not a new partnership for any of them, is the most seamless one yet.

Read the full article here.

Anthropocene offers stunning and scary glances at the large-scale changes humanity has made to the planet

By Chris Knight
National Post

★★★★

Who knew the end of the world could be so beautiful? The latest eco-doc from Jennifer Baichwal (Manufactured Landscapes, Watermark), co-directed by Edward Burtynsky and Nicholas de Pencier, shows viewers some of the large-scale changes we are making to the planet. Like the second sunrise of a hydrogen bomb, they are equal parts stunning and scary.

Take “Bagger 293,” an earth-moving machine working an open-pit coalmine in Germany. Ninety-six metres tall and using 16 megawatts of power, it could scoop up the material needed to build the great pyramid in less than a month. It looks like something out of science-fiction; in fact, you can see one in the background of a shot in TV’s Westworld. The mine is expanding, displacing local residents; but it remains a weirdly beautiful sight.

Not all the film’s segments are doom-and-gloom. Narrated by Alicia Vikander, Anthropocene: The Human Epoch visits an electric-car-battery plant in Michigan, and delivers a time-lapse trip through the 57-kilometre Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland, which will reduce the dangers and pollution of trucking freight along mountain roads. The film opens and closes in Kenya’s Nairobi National Park, where mammoth mounds of elephant tusks are set ablaze to stop them being sold on the black market.

Age of Anthropocene: Art highlights human destruction of Earth

By Jesse Tahirali & Marlene Leung
CTV News

Rainbow mountains of coloured plastic. Artificial cliffs carved into a coal mine. Sheets of pale dirt shaved clean from a shrinking forest.

Humanity’s fingerprints are pressed all over the Earth’s surface, and famed Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky is putting them on full display at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Art this fall.

His new exhibit uses photo murals, video and augmented reality displays to take a wide-angle look at the “human signature” we’ve left on our planet.

Read the full article here.

Cutting-edge artistry ushers in troubling new era

By Sandra Abma
CBC News

This week on the list: a mind-boggling look at humankind's impact on our planet, a showcase of animation's best and brightest, and a big sound on a couple of small stages.

Anthropocene

Anthropocene, on now at the National Gallery of Canada, is a vivid voyage into the environmental catastrophe wrought by we humans in our pursuit of minerals, industrialization and urbanization.

At the centre of this interactive multi-media experience are the immense, high-resolution photographs of Edward Burtynsky, simultaneously frightening and eerily beautiful depictions of deforestation and urban blight.

The images have been been augmented with 3D technology that can be activated by a smart phone or tablet, allowing viewers to virtually step inside the images. (If you don't own one, tablets are available for loan the exhibition entrance.)

Read the full article here.

Review: Anthropocene is a shocking and beautiful documentary

By Kate Taylor
The Globe and Mail

★★★★

Vast rectangular ponds of foul yellow water lie evaporating in the Chilean desert; they will produce the lithium that powers electric-car batteries. A gorgeous red-and-grey rock is imprinted with an eye-catching circular pattern: It’s the mark of Russian potash mining, extracting one of the fertilizers that is permanently altering the composition of the Earth’s soil. Anthropocene: The Human Epoch is packed with such shattering images and astounding ironies. As documentarians Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier pursue their collaboration with photographer Edward Burtynsky in a third film (following Manufactured Landscapes and Watermark), they strike a delicate yet purposeful balance between observation and advocacy. Both shocking and beautiful, the film impresses itself on the viewer with the awesome scale of the imagery – and with the urgency behind it. We have entered an epoch in which human activity is shaping the planet more than any natural force. Anthropocene bears witness that something’s got to give.

The film Anthropocene: The Human Epoch opens Friday in Toronto, Oct. 5 in Vancouver, Oct. 19 in Montreal and through the fall in other cities.

Documenting our Man-Made Epoch

The Agenda with Steve Paikin

Aired September 28

Photographer Edward Burtynsky, filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal, and director of photography Nicholas De Pencier join Steve Paikin to discuss "Anthropocene: The Human Epoch." The multifaceted project explores humankind's tremendous effect on planet Earth.

Watch the segment here.

The directing trio behind Anthropocene hope you walk away enlightened and transformed

By Chris Knight
National Post

The three directors of Anthropocene: The Human Epoch are trying to describe the editing process required to bring an estimated 375 hours –15 days! – of footage down to a 90-minute documentary.

Jennifer Baichwal likens it to a jigsaw puzzle. “Some people have the picture right there,” she says. “And some people look at it once and then hide it. This is like putting a massive puzzle together without ever seeing the picture.”

Edward Burtynsky chimes in: “And it’s got 2,000 pieces that don’t belong.”

Not to be left out, Nicholas de Pencier adds: “And half the pieces don’t actually fit!”

Editing Anthropocene – the title refers to a suggested name for the current geological era, one in which humans are the dominant force on the planet’s ecosystem – was a year-long process, after three years spent travelling to six continents to find material, including mining operations in Germany, the U.S., Italy and Norilsk, in northern Russia; a 57-kilometre rail tunnel in Switzerland; a huge seawall in China (a nation known for its wall-building prowess); and efforts to save endangered species in Kenya.

Read the full article here.

New exhibit Anthropocene opens at the Art Gallery of Ontario

Metro Morning with Matt Galloway

A new art exhibition opens today at the AGO, looking at how humans have irreversibly transformed the planet. We hear from the three artists at the centre of the project: photographer Edward Burtynsky and filmmakers filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier.

Listen here.

Anthropocene art show and documentary will shock you with a view of human impact on the planet

By Kate Taylor
The Globe and Mail

The project, which includes not only a new documentary but also two museum exhibitions and an art book, gives a chilling, yet sometimes beautiful, examination of the indelible and spreading mark of human activity on the planet.

Like some eerie sculpture, a dome-shaped pile of elephant tusks glimmers in a darkened gallery. It’s a non-existent thing, the virtual recreation of a huge cache of contraband ivory burned to ashes two years ago.

Poaching is pushing the African elephant to the brink, yet another example of our species' pervasive impact on the planet. The indelible and spreading mark of human activity is the meaning of the term Anthropocene and the theme of a four-year collaboration between award-winning landscape photographer Edward Burtynsky and the documentary filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier. Following on their environmental films Manufactured Landscapes and Watermark, the Anthropocene project includes not only a new documentary but also two museum exhibitions and an art book.

To produce it, the trio visited every continent except Antarctica, stopping in 20 different countries. One of those countries was Kenya where in 2016 their cameras recorded an unusual event: the burning of 100 tonnes of elephant tusks and rhino horns by government officials. Determined to save these species by demonstrating to poachers that the ivory and horn is worthless unless attached to a living animal, the Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta set light to the largest pile.

Read the full article here.

ANTHROPOCENE shows fierce beauty of rapidly collapsing Earth

By Peter Howell
Toronto Star

★★★★

ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch — a companion piece to exhibitions of the same name opening Friday at Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery in Ottawa — is rife with such horrors, yet there’s a fierce beauty to the work of Baichwal, Burtynsky and de Pencier. They travel the world with an artful lens that makes human constructions seem awe-inspiring — but only from a distance.

Read the full review here.

Toronto's most famous photographer brings stunning images to the AGO

Amy Carlberg
BlogTO

Edward Burtynsky has arrived at the AGO along with collaborators Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier in a sprawling exhibit that explores the impact humans have had on the earth. In Anthropocene, chilling yet beautiful images come to life through large scale photography, video and augmented reality installations.

Check out the photo gallery here.

Master photog Edward Burtynsky shows us the lay of the land in new National Gallery exhibit

Lynn Saxberg
Ottawa Citizen

Master photographer Edward Burtynsky has dedicated much of his life to documenting the impact of humans on earth through dramatic, large-format photographs of industrial landscapes around the world.

The St. Catharines-born artist has won numerous awards for his work, and his striking photos are included in the collections of some of the world’s most prestigious institutions, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum, as well as the Tate Modern in London.

Now a powerful new multi-media exhibition, Anthropocene, opens this week at the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario. The accompanying film, Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, a TIFF 2018 special presentation, will be screened at the gallery Thursday.

The result of a four-year collaboration between Burtynsky and filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, the Anthropocene project consists of large-scale photographs, films, high-resolution murals with film extensions, and augmented reality installations that bring you into the landscape. The title refers to the proposed geological term for the current epoch, defining an age when human activity has been the dominant force in changing the planet.

Read the full article here.