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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Read MoreNYC-ARTS
A profile of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, known for his large format photographs of industrial landscapes. His work integrates critical reporting with visual aesthetics, bearing witness to the impact of humans on the planet.
View the full profile here.
Read MoreBy 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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Read MoreBy 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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Read MoreBy 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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Read MoreBy Mary Harper
BBC News Africa
For the past 40 years, Edward Burtynsky has photographed the impact of human industry on the planet and for his latest collection, African Studies, he travelled across the continent taking photos from above. He spoke to the BBC's Mary Harper.
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Read MoreBy 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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Read MoreBy 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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Read MoreQueen’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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Read MoreNational Geographic Italia
By Carlo Andriani
In collaborazione con Fondazione Sylva, il fotografo Edward Burtynsky presenta al Festival delle Scienze di Roma la mostra dedicata alla distruzione del patrimonio arboreo millenario causata dal batterio “Xylella fastidiosa".
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Read MoreBy Karena Walter
St. Catharines Standard
World renowned photographer and St. Catharines native Edward Burtynsky wants to transform a 180,000-pound metal forge at the former General Motors plant on Ontario Street into a major public artwork for the city.
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Read MoreBy Gege Li
New Scientist
These arresting images of industrial developments in Senegal, South Africa and Namibia were taken by Edward Burtynsky, who spent four years capturing African landscapes using aerial photography.
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Read MoreDaniel Browning
The Art Show | ABC Radio National
Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian-Ukrainian photographer who captures human activity on Earth that's normally too big to perceive, except through aerial photography.
His scenes of rapid industrialisation and large-scale pollution characterise the Anthropocene, the idea that we are in the age of man-made environmental crisis. So how does he pick his monumental subjects? And what has he witnessed over his 40-year career?
Listen to the episode here.
Read MoreBy Neha Kale
The Saturday Paper
Caspar David Friedrich’s unsettling vision of the sublime is a key inspiration for Edward Burtynsky’s chronicles of human destruction of the natural world.
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Read MoreBy Declan Bowring
ABC Radio Sydney
Photographer Edward Burtynsky has spent his life trying to capture the environmental cost of civilisation and he is struggling to keep up.
"The world's making more of my subject every day," Mr Burtynsky told ABC Radio Sydney Breakfast presenter James Valentine.
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Read MoreBy Sarah Ward
Concrete Playground
When January rolls around, Sydney Festival fills the city with a massive array of arts and culture events, and kickstarts each new year in style in the process. But sometimes there's something on the fest's bill that's just too exciting to hold back until its next season — and filling the Oxford Street Precinct with nine-metre screens showcasing stunning aerial industrial landscape images from a renowned photographer is one such event.
Those photos hail from acclaimed Canadian Edward Burtynsky and, from Thursday, August 25–Sunday, September 18, they'll be on display in Sydney's Taylor Square. Sydney Festival is setting up three screens as part of an installation called In the Wake of Progress, a free immersive multimedia piece which'll span 40 years of Burtynsky's work.
Read MoreBy Nick Galvin
The Sydney Morning Herald
Pedestrians passing through Darlinghurst’s Taylor Square will next week be confronted by three massive electronic screens showing startling images of global industrial landscapes.
Called In the Wake of Progress and accompanied by an original score, the epic multimedia project is a clarion call for action on climate change.
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Read MoreAustralian Photography
The work of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky – known for his large-scale depictions of humanity's impact on the planet – are set to blanket Sydney’s Oxford Street precinct from next week.
Towering across three immense nine-metre screens, Burtynsky’s new work, In the Wake of Progress, will 'envelop and illuminate' Taylor Square from 25 August until 18 September as part of the Sydney Festival.
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Read MoreBy Chrissie Goldrick
Australian Geographic
The very fabric of our daily lives; the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the homes we inhabit and the cars we drive depend upon vast global supply chains that in turn rely on the exploitation of human and natural resources to create and maintain. The irony of Burtynsky’s large-scale depictions of humanity’s impact on the planet is that his images are absorbing, mesmerising and often jaw-droppingly beautiful.
A major new public multimedia installation featuring his work will open in Sydney in August, and the man himself will be there to present a series of talks and events at the Australian Museum in partnership with Sydney Festival. Projected across three 9m screens, In the Wake of Progress will illuminate Oxford Street’s Taylor Square in Darlinghurst from 25 August–18 September 2022.
Read MoreBy Ian Austen
CANADA LETTER
The New York Times
Long before the climate crisis was the focus of global concern Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky was traveling the world documenting what people have inflicted on the environment and, by extension themselves.
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