‘We all believe that this is the important issue of our day. It’s actually a crisis. If you engage in the environmental rant, I think people turn off. But if you open up a place for discourse, for understanding – through photographs, through things that are open to a personal interpretation, hopefully that’s a more profound transformative experience.’ – Nicholas de Pencier
Phosphor Tailings Pond #4, Near Lakeland, Florida, USA 2012
Photo © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Sundaram Tagore Galleries, Hong Kong and Singapore / Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto
Renowned Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has always been drawn to human interaction with the landscape. His images, typically printed at large sizes, are distinguished by the dynamic between their sweeping perspective and the importance of their fine detail.
The almost incomprehensible scale of ‘geological time’ is plainly something that fascinates Burtynsky and informs his image making.
‘That idea with the still photograph is to engage, to be engrossing. I always wanted to make images that are big and more immersive when you stand in front of them. It allows us to see the world sharp across the whole field. We don’t see the world in that way through our own eyes, we have this sharp centre and then it all falls off. The image allows us to see in a more vivid way.’ – Edward Burtynsky
Clearcut #1, Palm Oil Plantation, Borneo, Malaysia 2016
Photo © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Sundaram Tagore Galleries, Hong Kong and Singapore / Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto
‘Extinction is one of the markers of the Anthropocene. We are basically in a state now in the middle of the sixth grade extinction and extinction rates are up to 10,000 times natural background rates. So we’re witnessing extinction of an incredible magnitude, all caused by humans. And this story for us was both apocalyptic but also hopeful because there are all of these people working towards change..’
– Jennifer Baichwal
Oil Bunkering #1, Niger Delta, Nigeria 2016
Photo © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Sundaram Tagore Galleries, Hong Kong and Singapore / Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto
‘We don’t know where our stuff comes from, it’s about reconnecting us to these places in the world at these points in the world that somehow really speak to the scale of the effect almost 8 billion people are having on materials and how they recombine themselves in ways we don’t expect.’ – Edward Burtynsky
The Anthropocene Project started in 2014 as an idea for a photographic essay and an accompanying film which would become the third in a trilogy that started with Manufactured Landscapes (2006) and Watermark (2013). But, like its subject, it gradually expanded into something considerably more ambitious…
See the full story in Photo Review Magazine Dec 2018-Feb 2019 issue.
