By Larry Humber
The Art Newspaper
A trove of Inuit art—some 89,000 drawings in all—was created in Cape Dorset (now Kinngait) near the southern tip of Baffin Island between 1950 and 1980, providing a way for the community in Canada’s remote Nunavut territory to generate income. But very few of those works have seen the light of day through the issuing of limited-edition prints, with the Toronto market very much in mind.
After a devastating fire destroyed a similar archive in a nearby Arctic community, the Ontario-based McMichael Canadian Art Collection moved to acquire the Cape Dorset drawings in 1990, giving them a secure home. “Inuit art was always folded into our national identity,” says Sarah Milroy, the McMichael’s chief curator, making the acquisition an obvious move.
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Read MoreBy Rita Trichur
The Globe and Mail
Report on Business
Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky is urging corporations to help depoliticize the climate crisis amid a growing partisan backlash against environmental issues that is particularly pronounced in the United States.
Mr. Burtynsky, who has spent his 40-year career capturing images of human-altered landscapes, wants business leaders to use their clout to ensure that Canadian society remains aligned on transitioning to a low-carbon economy.
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Read MoreThe multidisciplinary exhibition tells the ongoing story of the Babyn Yar ravine in Kyiv, Ukraine and its extraordinary synagogue for the first time in its full cultural, historical, spiritual and political context.
March 16, TORONTO (ON) – Today, the Koffler Gallery, in partnership with Swiss Architect Manuel Herz and Canadian historian and curator Robert Jan van Pelt, announce the world-premiere exhibition of The Synagogue at Babyn Yar: Turning the Nightmares of Evil into a shared Dream of Good. This international exhibition is brought together with assistance from Canadian architect Douglas Birkenshaw and through architectural photography by celebrated Dutch photographer Iwan Baan. The exhibition features large-scale photographic murals directed by Ukrainian-Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky taken by Ukrainian photographer Maxim Dondyuk.
Read MoreBy Mark Feeney
Boston Globe
NEW BRITAIN, Conn. — By the numbers, “Edward Burtynsky: Earth Observed” is a small show, with just 31 photographs. There’s also a nine-minute video showing Burtynsky at work. That’s it. Yet in ways that matter more than the merely numerical — sweep, scale, ambition, urgency — it has the heft, and impact, of a much larger show.
“Edward Burtynsky: Earth Observed,” which runs through April 16 at the New Britain Museum of American Art, might be seen as a stripped-down Burtynsky career retrospective. It proceeds in roughly chronological order, with the earliest photograph from 1985, and the most recent from 2016. Five continents are represented, with only Antarctica and South America missing.
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Read MoreBy Wendy Stueck
The Globe and Mail
For decades, Edward Burtynsky has created images that show how humans affect the natural world – turning the gritty, unglamourous details of mines, dams, shipyards and factories into haunting works that call on all of us to think about our impact on the planet.
A winner of multiple prestigious awards, the photographer has collaborated with other artists to document the impact of climate change through works including In the Wake of Progress. A multi-media project, that piece premiered at the Luminato Festival in June on advertising screens at Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square. Mr. Burtynsky is also one of three artists behind The Anthropocene Project, a multi-media work that investigates the impacts of humans on earth.
In December, the Canadian Journalism Foundation launched the Edward Burtynsky Award for Climate Photojournalism. The competition is open to Canadian professionals employed by, or freelancing for, domestic news outlets. The deadline for submissions is Jan. 20, 2023, with a $5,000 prize for the winner.
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Read MoreQueen’s University Arts and Science
Opening event unveils the possibility of what Standing Whale could bring to Queen’s University
Standing Whale might just be a concept, the vision of Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky, but the excitement was palpable at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre last week.
Based on the story of a pod of North Atlantic Blue Whales that perished in an ice event off the coast of Newfoundland in 2014, Standing Whale is a thematic continuation of Burtynsky’s 40-year artistic practice looking at the impacts of humans on the planet. Intended to be a true-to-size, 75-foot artistic re-imagining inspired by the retrieved skeletons that washed ashore in 2014, Standing Whale is an acknowledgement to the power of telling our human stories, only this time as a three-dimensional sculpture rather than a two-dimensional image.
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Read MoreNational Geographic Italia
By Carlo Andriani
In collaborazione con Fondazione Sylva, il fotografo Edward Burtynsky presenta al Festival delle Scienze di Roma la mostra dedicata alla distruzione del patrimonio arboreo millenario causata dal batterio “Xylella fastidiosa".
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Read MoreBy Karena Walter
St. Catharines Standard
World renowned photographer and St. Catharines native Edward Burtynsky wants to transform a 180,000-pound metal forge at the former General Motors plant on Ontario Street into a major public artwork for the city.
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Read MoreCBC 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.
Read MoreCBC SPARK
How new technologies are changing the way we think about originality and authorship in art and artifacts.
Listen to the episode here.
Read MoreBy Kate Taylor
The Globe and Mail
“Photography embodies truth in a way that transcends language, culture, borders, and time. In the face of fake news and Putin’s vicious disinformation campaign, Ukrainian photographers are using this moment to show the world the truth.
“Their dedication to their art, even as their towns are surrounded by invading Russian forces bringing terror to their doorsteps, is a bravery that humbles me.
“Photography is about light conquering darkness. And as we speak, Ukrainian photographers are conquering an unimaginable form of darkness. I can think of no more outstanding contribution to photography than that.”
Read the article here.
Read MoreBy Edward Burtynsky
Maclean’s
Edward Burtynsky: For over 20 years my mother advocated for the people of Ukraine. She knows what it means to lose freedom and what it takes to fight to get it back.
Read the full essay here.
Read MoreBy Jeremy Nuttall
Toronto Star
One of Canada’s foremost photographic artists is raising money for humanitarian relief in Ukraine by giving a special print of a famous work to the first 30 people who show him a $10,000 receipt for a donation to the Red Cross’s humanitarian relief for the country.
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Read MoreQueen’s University is proud to announce a partnership with world-renowned Canadian photographer, and Queen’s Honorary Doctorate recipient (2007), Edward Burtynsky to help realize his new public art piece titled Standing Whale.
Read the full press release here.
Read MoreBy Sarah Rose Sharp
Hyperallergic
Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky received high honors today, November 24, recognized for his “Outstanding Contribution to Photography” by the World Photography Organisation’s 2022 Sony World Photography Awards. Burtynsky’s work captures wide-angle views of industrial processes and waste and their interactions with natural ecosystems. Over decades, his work has examined the complex process of resource extraction, use, and disposal, revealing its impact in vivid detail. His images combine technical skill with sweeping scale and expert composition, using aesthetic wonder to twist the knife of abject environmental damage.
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Read MoreThe Nicholas Metivier Gallery is pleased to announce that Salt Pan #18 by Edward Burtynsky has been acquired by The J. Paul Getty Museum as part of their permanent collection.
Read the full announcement here.
Read MoreThe Nicholas Metivier Gallery is pleased to announce that Lithium Mines #2 by Edward Burtynsky has been acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of their permanent collection. The Met's Department of Photographs houses a collection of more than 75,000 works spanning the history of photography from its invention in the 1830s to the present.
Read the full announcement here.
Read MoreBy Bill Gates
Financial Times
Illustrated with photographs by Edward Burtynsky
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Read MoreNovember 24, 2020, Toronto — The Ryerson Image Centre (RIC) is proud to announce a multi-year donation of photographs by celebrated Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, whose iconic images have brought worldwide attention to the impacts of human industry on the natural landscape. The first installment of this gift comprises 142 photographs from the artist’s early career, a selection of which have been made public in a virtual gallery on the RIC’s website. Subsequent annual gifts will make the Toronto-based photography centre the most important global repository for the study of Burtynsky’s oeuvre.
Edward Burtynsky began his career in the late 1970s at the School of Image Arts of Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University). "It was important to me that my life’s work be housed in a Canadian institution, and it felt like a fitting 'homecoming' to entrust these works to the same place where I first developed as a photographer,” Burtynsky says. “The Ryerson Image Centre has become one of the leading museums in the world for photo historical research and has a growing collection of artist archives. I realized that there was no place I would rather have my work preserved and studied.”
Read the full press release here.
Read MoreBy Sue Carter
Toronto Star
Edward Burtynsky gifting his archives to the Ryerson Image Centre marks a circular journey for one of the world’s most esteemed contemporary photographers.
The downtown university has just announced the first instalment of his multi-year donation to its photographic gallery and research facility. It features 142 photos from Burtynsky’s early career, created between 1976 and 1989. Subsequent annual donations, to span three to five years, will add more chronological works from his five-plus decades of visually documenting how so-called human progress and industrial spread have environmentally devastated the planet.
As a young student from nearby suburban St. Catharines, Burtynsky was exposed to groundbreaking ideas at the School of Image Arts at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University) in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Along with art classes, Burtynsky studied sociology, psychology and film. He felt encouraged to take risks with his photography, thanks to energized faculty members such as Marta Braun, whom he credits with teaching him art history.
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