By Damon Embling
EuroNews Culture
Striking photos, murals and video footage from Canadian photographic artist Edward Burtynsky urge a rethink of our legacy on Earth, and the pursuit of a more sustainable future.
In this edition of CULT, Euronews reporter Damon Embling looks around a new exhibition at London’s Saatchi Gallery, which delves into the impact of humans on our planet.
Check out the full feature here.
By Sakchi Khandelwal
BNN
The 'Burtynsky: Extraction/Abstraction' exhibition at London's Saatchi Gallery captures the profound impact of human activities on Earth through over 90 large-format photographs. Edward Burtynsky's art reveals the abstract beauty and unsettling truths of industrialization, urging visitors to reflect on their ecological footprint and consider sustainable futures.
Read the full review here.
Read MoreTimeOut London
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
All the things that make modern life tick – the mines for our batteries, the farms for our food, the abattoirs for our meat – are kept secret, out of view because they lay bare the damage we’re doing to the planet. Burtynsky’s vast, mega-scale photographs here at the Saatchi Gallery (there’s a concurrent, free, smaller show of his work at Flowers Gallery too) drag those private shames out into the open. He photographs salt marshes carving up the Spanish coastline, gold mines spilling cyanide into the Johannesburg’s groundwater, circular crops sucking Saudi Arabia’s aquifers dry, diamond mines leaking toxic waste into the hills of South Africa.
Read the full review here.
Read MoreBy Jasper Spires
FAD Magazine
Acclaimed Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has used his career as an artist to highlight and critique the impact of industrialisation on the natural world, and his latest showing at The Saatchi Gallery is no different. Extraction / Abstraction is the largest exhibition of Burtynsky’ work to date, capturing the overwhelming scale of his vision, and humanity’s changing environment. Working within the interplay of wild and post-industrial spaces, and how these shape not only the largest natural phenomenon on our planet, but the individual lives of human beings, the show is a stirring portrayal of the Anthropocene at its most striking and devastating.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreBen Smith
A Small Voice: Conversations with Photographers
In episode 224, Edward discusses, among other things:
His transition from film to digital
Staying positive by ‘moving through grief to land on meaning’
Making compelling images and how scale creates ambiguity
Defining the over-riding theme of his work early on
His relative hope and optimism for the future through positive technology
The importance of having a hopeful component to the work
How he offsets his own carbon footprint
Listen to the episode here
Read MoreBy Chris Harvey
The Telegraph
“I use a digital camera in a helicopter or aeroplane,” says Edward Burtynsky. “It’s moving fast and it’s bouncy and shaky, and I’m taking hundreds of pictures, because if something comes your way and you don’t get it, you’ll never get back to it no matter how good the pilot is. You need to be ready to make that picture when it happens. If you miss it, that’s it.”
The 68-year-old Canadian photographer, the great chronicler of how heavy industry is transforming our planet, is at home in The Blue Mountains, Ontario, explaining how he went from setting up painstaking shots on a tripod with a large format camera like early pioneers such as Ansel Adams, to embracing new technology. “All of a sudden, it was eureka,” he says. Yet the precision he learned as a young man still informs every image, and it’s something that a generation that has grown up with camera phones wouldn’t understand. “In the late ’80s, it cost me about $60 to take one picture. I would walk around with an eight-by-ten camera, sometimes for two or three days, and not take a picture, if the light wasn’t right. But I would make notes: ‘OK, come back here at six o’clock’.”
Read the full interview here.
Read MoreBy Noémie de Bellaigue
The Eye of Photography
The Berlin gallery presents a selection from series by the Canadian photographer produced on the African continent. Aerial views of breathtaking pictorial power which bear witness to the effects of industrial expansion on African landscapes while celebrating those still preserved from human exploitation.
How can we measure the impact of human activity on our planet, other than through data? How can we represent the damage caused by industrial activity, other than through images of devastation? How can we talk about Africa today other than through poverty?
For seven years, from 2015 to 2020, Edward Burtynsky explored ten African countries from the air – the aerial point of view being, according to him, the most powerful scale to reveal the immensity of his subject.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreIl restera toujours la culture
Radio-Canada
Elsa Pépin, Audrey Martel, Heather et Arizona O'Neil proposent des suggestions littéraires; Mara Joly parle de la série Après le déluge; Marianne Desautels-Marissal et Émile Roy ont vu l'exposition Le paysage abstrait, d'Edward Burtynsky; L'écrivaine J.D. Kurtness revient sur son livre, La vallée de l'étrange.
Listen to the episode here.
Read MoreCBC The Sunday Magazine with Piya Chattopadhyay
After more than 40 years photographing the industrial sublime around the world, Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky's new project brings him home to St. Catharines, Ont. He's taking an abandoned relic – a 68,000-kilogram sheet metal forge from the former General Motors auto plant, where both Burtynsky and his father worked – and turning it into a sculpture memorializing the industry and people that once drove life in his hometown. He joins Chattopadhyay to talk about his upbringing, the resource industries that define his career and his ongoing work to make his audience connect his beautiful images to the rapid destruction of our planet.
Listen to the segment here.
Read MoreBy Brenda Chávez
Rockdeluxe
Es una leyenda de la fotografía por haber documentado como nadie antes el efecto de la actividad humana sobre nuestro frágil planeta. Parte de su trabajo en países de África subsahariana, la exposición “African Studies”, puede visitarse en el espacio madrileño CentroCentro, dentro del festival PHotoEspaña, hasta el 1 de octubre. Hablamos con él sobre su implicación como artista entusiasta que observa todo lo que lo rodea como un dedicado guardián del medio ambiente.
Read the full interview here.
Read MoreBy Casey Beal
BESIDE Magazine
Edward Burtynsky’s award-winning, large-scale photographs illuminate the environmental cost and alarming beauty of human intervention in natural landscapes. We spoke with him about his artistic influences, human responsibility for the planet, and the great grief behind it all.
Read the full interview here.
Read MoreBy Chris Dart
CBC Arts
Ezrin is the co-producer of In the Wake of Progress, an immersive short film based on the 40 year career of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky. (The other co-producer is Burtynsky himself.) The film, which looks at the effects of resource extraction around the world, made its debut last year, and is currently the centrepiece of a Burtynsky exhibition called Le paysage abstrait, on now at Montreal's Arsenal Contemporary Art gallery.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreFM 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
Listen to the full interview here.
Read MoreBy Stéphane Baillargeon
Le Devoir
Photographiés de très loin et de très haut par l’oeil unique du Canadien Edward Burtynsky, un étang d’eau salée du Sénégal évoque une toile de l’abstraction lyrique, le delta du Colorado fait immédiatement penser à une oeuvre de l’expressionnisme abstrait et d’autres prises encore de champs ou de mines, captées aux quatre coins du monde, rappellent les travaux de Clyfford Still, d’Hedda Sterne ou Adolph Gottlieb.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreBy 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.
Listen to the full interview here.
Read More