NEWS HUB

Edward Burtynsky: Extraction/Abstraction at the Saatchi Gallery

By Jasper Spires
FAD Magazine

Acclaimed Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has used his career as an artist to highlight and critique the impact of industrialisation on the natural world, and his latest showing at The Saatchi Gallery is no different. Extraction / Abstraction is the largest exhibition of Burtynsky’ work to date, capturing the overwhelming scale of his vision, and humanity’s changing environment. Working within the interplay of wild and post-industrial spaces, and how these shape not only the largest natural phenomenon on our planet, but the individual lives of human beings, the show is a stirring portrayal of the Anthropocene at its most striking and devastating. 

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Ep. 224 - Edward Burtynsky

Ben Smith
A Small Voice: Conversations with Photographers

In episode 224, Edward discusses, among other things:

  • His transition from film to digital

  • Staying positive by ‘moving through grief to land on meaning’

  • Making compelling images and how scale creates ambiguity

  • Defining the over-riding theme of his work early on

  • His relative hope and optimism for the future through positive technology

  • The importance of having a hopeful component to the work

  • How he offsets his own carbon footprint

Listen to the episode here

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Edward Burtynsky Interview: The photographer – a great chronicler of how Earth has been poisoned by heavy industry – sees danger in over-politicising climate change

By Chris Harvey
The Telegraph

“I use a digital camera in a helicopter or aeroplane,” says Edward Burtynsky. “It’s moving fast and it’s bouncy and shaky, and I’m taking hundreds of pictures, because if something comes your way and you don’t get it, you’ll never get back to it no matter how good the pilot is. You need to be ready to make that picture when it happens. If you miss it, that’s it.”

The 68-year-old Canadian photographer, the great chronicler of how heavy industry is transforming our planet, is at home in The Blue Mountains, Ontario, explaining how he went from setting up painstaking shots on a tripod with a large format camera like early pioneers such as Ansel Adams, to embracing new technology. “All of a sudden, it was eureka,” he says. Yet the precision he learned as a young man still informs every image, and it’s something that a generation that has grown up with camera phones wouldn’t understand. “In the late ’80s, it cost me about $60 to take one picture. I would walk around with an eight-by-ten camera, sometimes for two or three days, and not take a picture, if the light wasn’t right. But I would make notes: ‘OK, come back here at six o’clock’.” 

Read the full interview here.

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