By Helen Gordon
Apollo Magazine
Crawford Lake is around an hour’s drive from Toronto, home of the photographer Edward Burtynsky. Scientists studying sediment layers in the lake have found samples of plutonium from hydrogen bomb tests, carbon particles from fossil fuel burning and nitrates from the mass application of chemical fertilisers. Some want the lake to become an international reference point marking the dawn of the Anthropocene – the period when the human species began to alter the planet irrevocably, becoming a geological force comparable to immense volcanic eruptions or the variations in the Earth’s orbit that drive glacial cycles.
Like these scientists, Burtynsky has long been fascinated by the effects of large-scale human activity on the landscape, especially industry and agriculture. His Anthropocene series (2012–17) and accompanying documentary of 2018 did much to popularise the term beyond the scientific community, and ‘Abstraction/Extraction’ – his sumptuous, thoughtful new retrospective at the Saatchi Gallery – continues this line of inquiry.
Read the full review here.