NEWS HUB

We are gradually realizing the impact of humans on the environment

FM 98.5

Columnist Fadwa Lapierre, who went to the Arsenal Contemporary Art to attend the exhibition The Abstract Landscape by the artist Edward Burtynsky, paints the portrait on Sunday, on the show Even le weekend.

“At first, we find it magnificent because they are landscape photos, but little by little, we realize the impact of humans on the environment, and therefore of our consumption.” – Fadwa Lapierre

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LEGENDARY RECORD PRODUCER BOB EZRIN DROPS BY CHOM

By Randy Renaud
CHOM 97.7

Bob Ezrin produced The Wall for Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel's debut album, Destroyer for Kiss, Alice Cooper's classic early albums, U2's latest album, as well as albums for Deep Purple, Rod Stewart, Jane's Addiction; and he dropped by the CHOM studios to discuss a new multi-media production that he is involved in, called Le Paysage Abstrait, at the Arsenal Contemporary Art Gallery all this month. Randy Renaud talks with the legendary Canadian producer about his remarkable career, and the many artists he has worked with, and Ezrin shares personal stories about Peter Gabriel, The Edge, and Pink Floyd, and reveals whether he is still friends with Roger Waters. 

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Art Exhibition Reflects on Xylella's Devastating Impact

By Ylenia Granitto
Olive Oil Times

The Sigismondo Castromediano Museum in Lecce, Puglia, will host the ‘Xylella Studies’ exhibition by the Canadian photographer and artist Edward Burtynsky, who has captured the disruption caused by Xylella fastidiosa in 12 large-format photographs and a video until September 10th.

The event is the result of a partnership with Sylva Foundation, a non-profit founded in 2021, aiming at the environmental regeneration of lands affected by Xylella fastidiosa through reforestation.

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Edward Burtynsky Reveals the African Landscapes We Never See

By Ellyn Kail
Feature Shoot

In his new book, Edward Burtynsky recalls photographing oil bunkering sites in Nigeria’s Niger Delta as a “transformative moment of consciousness”—one that demonstrated the true scope of the wounds we inflict on our planet. With refineries spread out across the land, swaths of the environment have been drenched in oil. As the photographer leaned out of a helicopter to take in the scene, surreal colors spread out before him, as far as the eye could see. 

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Il disastro della Xylella negli scatti sugli ulivi di Edward Burtynsky

By Cecilia Pavone
Artribune

Costruire un nuovo ethos ecologico attraverso la testimonianza e la documentazione dei disastri ambientali provocati dall’azione antropica, per contrastare la crisi dell’abitare umano sulla Terra nell’era globalizzata dell’Antropocene. È questo il fulcro tematico dell’opera del canadese Edward Burtynsky (St. Catharines, 1955), fotografo di livello internazionale che ha vinto la XXV edizione del Premio Pascali con la mostra Xylella Studies, al Museo Castromediano di Lecce.Costruire un nuovo ethos ecologico attraverso la testimonianza e la documentazione dei disastri ambientali provocati dall’azione antropica, per contrastare la crisi dell’abitare umano sulla Terra nell’era globalizzata dell’Antropocene. È questo il fulcro tematico dell’opera del canadese Edward Burtynsky (St. Catharines, 1955), fotografo di livello internazionale che ha vinto la XXV edizione del Premio Pascali con la mostra Xylella Studies, al Museo Castromediano di Lecce.

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New Equipment Developed by Edward Burtynsky to Scan Major Photo Collection

Galleries West

The Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University will digitize 25,000 press photographs of Canadian events, speeding the normally laborious work with an innovative machine developed by Toronto photographer Edward Burtynsky.

Burtynsky says a vast array of stunning photographs at various institutions languish in dark boxes in temperature-controlled storage with no public access. 

"It's a thrill to finally be able to initiate an effective and innovative solution to this problem and bring this important photographic history into the light," he says.

Burtynsky has assembled a team of hardware and software developers to digitize the images with his equipment, known as ARKIV360, along with their folded captions, tear sheets and attached ephemera.

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The Image Centre receives $300,000 grant from the Department of Canadian Heritage to digitize collection of 25,000 press photographs

The Image Centre
Toronto Metropolitan University

Innovative ARKIV360 machine, developed by famed photographer Edward Burtynsky, will be used to scan The Image Centre’s Rudolph P. Bratty Family Collection and make it accessible in an online database. 

Toronto, ON – The Image Centre (IMC) at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) is pleased to announce that the Department of Canadian Heritage has granted over $300,000 to support the digitization of the IMC’s Rudolf P. Bratty Family Collection of press photographs drawn from the New York Times Photo Archive. 

This funding was issued through the Digital Access to Heritage component of the Museums Assistance Program (MAP), which provides support to heritage organizations to digitize collections, develop digital content and build their capacity in these areas. 

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Photographer Edward Burtynsky brings in high-tech scanner to help digitise Inuit art

By Larry Humber
The Art Newspaper

A trove of Inuit art—some 89,000 drawings in all—was created in Cape Dorset (now Kinngait) near the southern tip of Baffin Island between 1950 and 1980, providing a way for the community in Canada’s remote Nunavut territory to generate income. But very few of those works have seen the light of day through the issuing of limited-edition prints, with the Toronto market very much in mind.

After a devastating fire destroyed a similar archive in a nearby Arctic community, the Ontario-based McMichael Canadian Art Collection moved to acquire the Cape Dorset drawings in 1990, giving them a secure home. “Inuit art was always folded into our national identity,” says Sarah Milroy, the McMichael’s chief curator, making the acquisition an obvious move.

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Edward Burtynsky Views the Effects of Globalism From Above

By Erica Ackerberg
NYT Book Review

The Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky’s remarkable, large-scale images offer a painterly view of man-made infrastructure around the world, from quarries in Portugal to rice fields in China to oil refineries in California. His new book, AFRICAN STUDIES (Steidl, $95), focuses on a region he calls globalism’s “final stop”: sub-Saharan Africa. Capturing the impact of industrialization on the landscapes of Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Ethiopia and more from high above — from airplanes, helicopters and drones — Burtynsky’s camera documents in stunning detail and vibrant hues the toll of human intervention on our planet, from salt and sapphire mining to plastics recycling and dams. This book is both “a cautionary tale,” he says, and a reminder that this continent “still possesses some of the greatest natural reserves in the world.”\

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Of Salt, Sulfur, and Ore

By Elyssa Goodman
Blind Magazine

At first glance, Edward Burtynsky’s “African Studies” exhibition at the Howard Greenberg Gallery is a majestic geometry of colors and shapes, all with roots in art history.

The salt ponds of Senegal have traces of Gustav Klimt, sewn together mosaic-like near the towns of Tikat Banguel and Fatick. A view from above the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam recalls M.C. Escher’s famed staircases. In the coal tailings of South Africa, the plume of an Erte ensemble and the distressed rivulets of a Jackson Pollock. But a closer look, a closer read, reveals the startling nature of what Burtynsky calls “business as usual.” 

“African Studies” is currently on view in two New York galleries: at Howard Greenberg until April 22 and at the Sundaram Tagore Gallery until April 1. It was also released as a monograph by Steidl at the end of last year. It is a continuation of Burtynsky’s travels across the globe, capturing modern landscapes both touched and untouched by human hands, some more virulently than others. 

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Altered Topography

By Saffron Ward
Aesthetica Magazine

In November 2022, the world’s population hit 8 billion – a staggering milestone. Although the growth rate is slowing, the resources needed to support human life remain out of reach. Approximately 1.75 Earths are needed to sustain current activity. Therefore, the natural world has been morphing into something altogether different for centuries. In 2019, the United Nation’s global assessment report stated that 75% of ice-free land has been significantly changed by society, from agriculture to housing and industry. This “terrible beauty” is the subject of Edward Burtynsky’s (b. 1955) large-scale photographic works.

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In ‘African Studies,’ Edward Burtynsky Photographs the Human Imprint on Sub-Saharan Landscapes

By Grace Ebert
Colossal

Renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky approaches his latest project with curiosity about the future of human impact and globalization. From the diamond mines of South Africa to the richly textured landscape of Namibia’s Tsaus Mountains, African Studies spotlights the sub-Saharan region and its reserves of metals, salt, precious gemstones, and other ores. “I am surveying two very distinct aspects of the landscape,” he says in a statement, “that of the earth as something intact, undisturbed yet implicitly vulnerable… and that of the earth as opened up by the systematic extraction of resources.”

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KOFFLER GALLERY PRESENTS THE WORLD PREMIERE EXHIBITION OF “THE SYNAGOGUE AT BABYN YAR: TURNING THE NIGHTMARES OF EVIL INTO A SHARED DREAM OF GOOD”

The multidisciplinary exhibition tells the ongoing story of the Babyn Yar ravine in Kyiv, Ukraine and its extraordinary synagogue for the first time in its full cultural, historical, spiritual and political context.

March 16, TORONTO (ON) – Today, the Koffler Gallery, in partnership with Swiss Architect Manuel Herz and Canadian historian and curator Robert Jan van Pelt, announce the world-premiere exhibition of The Synagogue at Babyn Yar: Turning the Nightmares of Evil into a shared Dream of Good. This international exhibition is brought together with assistance from Canadian architect Douglas Birkenshaw and through architectural photography by celebrated Dutch photographer Iwan Baan. The exhibition features large-scale photographic murals directed by Ukrainian-Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky taken by Ukrainian photographer Maxim Dondyuk

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Photographs that don’t so much confront scale as embrace it

By Mark Feeney
Boston Globe

NEW BRITAIN, Conn. — By the numbers, “Edward Burtynsky: Earth Observed” is a small show, with just 31 photographs. There’s also a nine-minute video showing Burtynsky at work. That’s it. Yet in ways that matter more than the merely numerical — sweep, scale, ambition, urgency — it has the heft, and impact, of a much larger show.

“Edward Burtynsky: Earth Observed,” which runs through April 16 at the New Britain Museum of American Art, might be seen as a stripped-down Burtynsky career retrospective. It proceeds in roughly chronological order, with the earliest photograph from 1985, and the most recent from 2016. Five continents are represented, with only Antarctica and South America missing.

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‘We’re putting all living things at high risk’: Edward Burtynsky on the launch of the Canadian Journalism Foundation’s award for climate photojournalism

By Wendy Stueck
The Globe and Mail

For decades, Edward Burtynsky has created images that show how humans affect the natural world – turning the gritty, unglamourous details of mines, dams, shipyards and factories into haunting works that call on all of us to think about our impact on the planet.

A winner of multiple prestigious awards, the photographer has collaborated with other artists to document the impact of climate change through works including In the Wake of Progress. A multi-media project, that piece premiered at the Luminato Festival in June on advertising screens at Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square. Mr. Burtynsky is also one of three artists behind The Anthropocene Project, a multi-media work that investigates the impacts of humans on earth.

In December, the Canadian Journalism Foundation launched the Edward Burtynsky Award for Climate Photojournalism. The competition is open to Canadian professionals employed by, or freelancing for, domestic news outlets. The deadline for submissions is Jan. 20, 2023, with a $5,000 prize for the winner.

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Art Installation Tells Canadian Story

Queen’s University Arts and Science

Opening event unveils the possibility of what Standing Whale could bring to Queen’s University

Standing Whale might just be a concept, the vision of Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky, but the excitement was palpable at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre last week.

Based on the story of a pod of North Atlantic Blue Whales that perished in an ice event off the coast of Newfoundland in 2014, Standing Whale is a thematic continuation of Burtynsky’s 40-year artistic practice looking at the impacts of humans on the planet. Intended to be a true-to-size, 75-foot artistic re-imagining inspired by the retrieved skeletons that washed ashore in 2014, Standing Whale is an acknowledgement to the power of telling our human stories, only this time as a three-dimensional sculpture rather than a two-dimensional image.

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