VIRTUAL EVENT
Join us for a conversation between the RIC’s Director Paul Roth and celebrated Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, whose iconic images have brought global attention to the impacts of human industry on the natural landscape.
This insightful discussion will focus on Burtynsky’s artistic legacy, and the first two instalments of his multiyear, career-spanning donation of his photographs to the RIC. The first instalment includes more than 100 of Burtynsky’s earliest images from 1970–1989, revealing his origins as an earnest undergraduate photo student at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, making black and white landscape images with a view camera; his use of color to portray industry and human attempts to control nature; and his first photographic print editions, which established his reputation.
The second instalment of more than 50 images, from 1990–1999, illustrates Burtynsky’s artistic evolution and maturity during a period of increasingly ambitious projects and growing international recognition. These images track his innovative adoption of elevated viewpoints, to frame landscapes, industrial sites, extractive manufacturing, and waste practices within a widening consciousness of climate change and environmental jeopardy.
The Edward Burtynsky Collection at the RIC currently comprises over 200 photographs and is on track to become the most comprehensive institutional collection of this important artist's work.