The Oldie Podcast

Charlotte Metcalf is a journalist, editor, award-winning documentary film-maker and was co-presenter of the Break Out Culture podcast.   She is Subscriptions Editor and a frequent contributor at The Oldie.

Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian artist and photographer and award-winning film-maker. A recent major retrospective at London’s Saatchi Gallery showed his large format photographs, many vast, of industrial landscapes all over the world.  While they resemble beautiful abstract paintings, they depict industrialisation’s devastating impact on nature and human existence.

Listen to the episode here.

By 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.

By Chris Dart
CBC Arts

The super-producer's collaboration with Edward Burtynsky looks at humanity's impact on the world around us.

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.

Culture Club, Ici Première

“An important, essential, disturbing exhibition. Everyone must go and see [it].”

Listen to the full segment here.

By Stéphanie Bérubé
La Presse

Heureusement, il y a l’art. « L’art peut éveiller les consciences, lance Ed Burtynsky. Et cet éveil est la première étape menant à un changement. »

Read the full article here.

By 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.

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. 

Listen to the full interview here.

Daniel 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.

By 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.

Read the full article here.

By 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.

Read the full article here.

By 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.

By 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.

Read the full article here.

Australian 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.

Read the full article here.

By 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.

By 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.

Read the full article here.

By Neil Ever Osborne and M.A. Jacquemain
The Weather Network

After the public world premiere of Burtynsky’s multimedia art piece, In the Wake of Progress, on the towering screens surrounding Yonge-Dundas Square, this new body of work has been transformed into “an immersive walkthrough experience” at the Canadian Opera Company Theatre in Toronto for a limited run from June 25-July 17.

Renowned Canadian photographic artist Edward Burtynsky has launched a new exhibit this month, revisiting his lifelong subject of the human impact on the planet.

“We're at that point where words aren't enough,” he added. “We need to act.”

Read the full article here.

By Mark Wigmore
Classical FM

Edward Burtynsky joined Mark Wigmore on The Oasis.

Listen here.

By Sue Carter
Toronto Star

The lush forest in the opening sequence of photographer Edward Burtynsky’s “In the Wake of Progress,” a monumental new film installation at the Canadian Opera Company Theatre, provides visitors with some digital tree-bathing.

Visitors can move around and get up close as a caribou saunters and a bald eagle flies in, surveying the scene across three nine-metre screens. An animator spent six months in post-production adding wildlife and movement to one of Burtynsky’s panoramic still photos and the effects are seamless, down to the rustling ferns.

Despite the peacefulness, there is underlying anxiety. This is Burtynsky, after all, who has dedicated his 40-year career to documenting human impact on the environment. Serenity isn’t the intended takeaway from “In the Wake of Progress.” It’s a call to action and to witness.

Read the full article here.

By Laura Hensley
Canadian Business

In our Workspace series, CB is featuring interesting, smart-designed and one-of-a-kind spaces across Canada. From innovative home offices to out-of-the-box co-working spaces to unconventional setups—like this beauty company run out of a rural farmhouse and this vintage-clothing studio—we are looking to showcase the most unique and beautiful spaces from all industries. This month we are profiling the studio of Canadian photographer Ed Burtynsky.

Read the full article here.

By Irena Galea
The Globe and Mail

Burtynsky’s newest work is a 22-minute film that forces viewers to reckon with the global environmental and human impact of industrialization.

The boy on the screen leans against his metal tools in Chittagong, Bangladesh, to the sound of a warped orchestra. He’s dwarfed by the blackened hull of a ship looming behind him. It’s no longer being covered by insurance, so somebody, somewhere, has to take it apart. He got the job.

The hazardous working conditions he endures are propped up by the same developed countries where his photograph might be viewed, as Western shipowners often outsource their shipbreaking to Asian countries such as Bangladesh, exploiting cheap labour and a lack of workplace regulation.

Read the full article here.

By Michela Rosano
Canadian Geographic

At Young-Dundas Square, one of the most developed intersections in the country, an image of an old-growth forest is projected on every media screen, as a large crowd gathers. The lush greenery of the scene is the only “nature” that can be seen in this concrete space, save for a few small trees in planters along Yonge Street. The screens go dark and the show begins.

Read the full article here.

By Meghan Yuri Young
Now Playing Toronto

Internationally renowned Edward Burtynsky has devoted his career to documenting how our insatiable desire for consumption impacts our environment. Burtynsky’s most ambitious project takes him into uncharted territory as a visual artist to illustrate the devastation’s increased sense of urgency.

Read the full interview here.

By Mariam Matti
UofT News

Earlier in his career as a photographer and artist, Edward Burtynsky saw an opportunity to dedicate his life’s work to a single idea: humanity's impact on the planet.

In the 1980s, Burtynsky saw the growing sustainability challenges posed by the combination of heavy industry and billions of people.

His work would ultimately take him all over the world – and garner numerous awards and accolades – as he captured how humanity is reshaping the Earth through resource extraction, urban sprawl and manufacturing, to name a few.

Read the full article here.

Curiocity

The whole immersive art experience might be a little played out in Toronto, but we definitely think this is an exception to the rule. Edward Burtynsky, who is one of Canada’s preeminent photographers and artists, is putting on a new experience called “In the Wake of Progress“.

Read the full article here.

Elsa Lam
Canadian Architect

Toronto’s Yonge Dundas Square is usually a canyon of advertising. But in a commission for this June’s Luminato festival, photographer Ed Burtynsky transformed the 22 screens in the square into a canvas for an immersive media piece entitled In the Wake of Progress.

Drawing on footage from Burtynsky’s 40 years of photography and film projects, the 20-minute wordless piece traces humanity’s fall from Eden: moving from old growth forests to lands swept barren by clear cuts, and thence to suburbs, skyscrapers, and slums. Burtynsky’s iconic images of mountain-deep Carrera marble quarries, post-industrial shipbreakers, and blood red copper tailing pools make an appearance, the latter set to an especially ominous passage of chanting in the cinematic soundtrack by Phil Strong.

Read the full article here.

CBC Q with Tom Power

When Edward Burtynsky was a student, a teacher gave him an assignment that would change his life. He was told to go out and capture photographic evidence of humans. Burtynsky imagined what an alien would take photos of — the way humans have changed the planet on a massive scale — and it’s been his life’s work ever since. The Canadian photographer spoke with Tom Power about his biggest project yet, In the Wake of Progress, which highlights the ways humanity impacts the planet.

Listen here.

Chris Dart
CBC Arts

"In the Wake of Progress," the latest exhibit from photographic artist Edward Burtynsky, has been a long time coming — in more ways than one.

The exhibit — which is part of this year's Luminato Festival — consists of photos of human's impact on the world around them, selected from across Burtynsky's 40-plus year career. The pictures are displayed across 22 massive outdoor screens at Toronto's Yonge-Dundas Square, screens that usually show advertisements, and choreographed to music by composer Phil Strong.

It was also, in an alternate world, supposed to happen two years ago.

Read the full article here.

CBC Radio | What on Earth

Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has devoted much of his career to highlighting the ways humanity impacts the planet.

And he's setting out to do again with his latest art installation, In the Wake of Progress, which will take over all of the screens at Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto this weekend. The project will include photography and film starting with verdant untouched forests followed by images of the many ways humans have impacted the planet with practices like mining and deforestation.

Burtynsky spoke to What On Earth host Laura Lynch in his studio in Toronto about his latest public art project and how his role as an artist and advocate for the environment has changed over the course of his career. Here is part of their conversation.

Listen to the interview and read the Q&A here.

CBC SPARK

How new technologies are changing the way we think about originality and authorship in art and artifacts.

Listen to the episode here.

By Laura Decarufel
The Kit

As a culture, we’ve long relied on artists to both interpret our existing reality and to light a path to the future. Edward Burtynsky, 67, has been acting as such a prophet for 40 years. In his large-scale photographs of shipyards in China, logged forests in B.C. and African landfills dotted with Dollarama bags, he captures both the majestic beauty of our world—and the scale of the problems facing it.

Burtynsky’s latest project, “In the Wake of Progress,” is an immersive installation and a cri de coeur about the threat of climate change. (It debuts in June as part of Toronto’s Luminato arts festival and will then travel internationally.) The installation is two-pronged: a public art piece in Yonge-Dundas Square and a considerably more private experience, where viewers sit in a darkened room surrounded by three massive screens showing still photos and video—taken by Burtynsky across his career, around the world—all set to music that is alternately menacing and hopeful, courtesy of birdsong from ancient B.C. forests. As a career retrospective, it’s impressive. As a work of art, it’s beautiful, heartbreaking, galvanizing.

Read the full interview here.