By Chrissie Goldrick
Australian Geographic
The very fabric of our daily lives; the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the homes we inhabit and the cars we drive depend upon vast global supply chains that in turn rely on the exploitation of human and natural resources to create and maintain. The irony of Burtynsky’s large-scale depictions of humanity’s impact on the planet is that his images are absorbing, mesmerising and often jaw-droppingly beautiful.
A major new public multimedia installation featuring his work will open in Sydney in August, and the man himself will be there to present a series of talks and events at the Australian Museum in partnership with Sydney Festival. Projected across three 9m screens, In the Wake of Progress will illuminate Oxford Street’s Taylor Square in Darlinghurst from 25 August–18 September 2022.
Read MoreBy Ian Austen
CANADA LETTER
The New York Times
Long before the climate crisis was the focus of global concern Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky was traveling the world documenting what people have inflicted on the environment and, by extension themselves.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreBy Paul Gessel
Canadian Geographic
A century after the Group of Seven became famous for an idealized vision of Canadian nature, contemporary artists are incorporating environmental activism into work that highlights Canada’s disappearing landscapes.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreBy Neil Ever Osborne and M.A. Jacquemain
The Weather Network
After the public world premiere of Burtynsky’s multimedia art piece, In the Wake of Progress, on the towering screens surrounding Yonge-Dundas Square, this new body of work has been transformed into “an immersive walkthrough experience” at the Canadian Opera Company Theatre in Toronto for a limited run from June 25-July 17.
Renowned Canadian photographic artist Edward Burtynsky has launched a new exhibit this month, revisiting his lifelong subject of the human impact on the planet.
“We're at that point where words aren't enough,” he added. “We need to act.”
Read the full article here.
Read MoreBy Mark Wigmore
Classical FM
Edward Burtynsky joined Mark Wigmore on The Oasis.
Listen here.
Read MoreBy Sue Carter
Toronto Star
The lush forest in the opening sequence of photographer Edward Burtynsky’s “In the Wake of Progress,” a monumental new film installation at the Canadian Opera Company Theatre, provides visitors with some digital tree-bathing.
Visitors can move around and get up close as a caribou saunters and a bald eagle flies in, surveying the scene across three nine-metre screens. An animator spent six months in post-production adding wildlife and movement to one of Burtynsky’s panoramic still photos and the effects are seamless, down to the rustling ferns.
Despite the peacefulness, there is underlying anxiety. This is Burtynsky, after all, who has dedicated his 40-year career to documenting human impact on the environment. Serenity isn’t the intended takeaway from “In the Wake of Progress.” It’s a call to action and to witness.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreBy Laura Hensley
Canadian Business
In our Workspace series, CB is featuring interesting, smart-designed and one-of-a-kind spaces across Canada. From innovative home offices to out-of-the-box co-working spaces to unconventional setups—like this beauty company run out of a rural farmhouse and this vintage-clothing studio—we are looking to showcase the most unique and beautiful spaces from all industries. This month we are profiling the studio of Canadian photographer Ed Burtynsky.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreBy Irena Galea
The Globe and Mail
Burtynsky’s newest work is a 22-minute film that forces viewers to reckon with the global environmental and human impact of industrialization.
The boy on the screen leans against his metal tools in Chittagong, Bangladesh, to the sound of a warped orchestra. He’s dwarfed by the blackened hull of a ship looming behind him. It’s no longer being covered by insurance, so somebody, somewhere, has to take it apart. He got the job.
The hazardous working conditions he endures are propped up by the same developed countries where his photograph might be viewed, as Western shipowners often outsource their shipbreaking to Asian countries such as Bangladesh, exploiting cheap labour and a lack of workplace regulation.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreBy Michela Rosano
Canadian Geographic
At Young-Dundas Square, one of the most developed intersections in the country, an image of an old-growth forest is projected on every media screen, as a large crowd gathers. The lush greenery of the scene is the only “nature” that can be seen in this concrete space, save for a few small trees in planters along Yonge Street. The screens go dark and the show begins.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreBy Meghan Yuri Young
Now Playing Toronto
Internationally renowned Edward Burtynsky has devoted his career to documenting how our insatiable desire for consumption impacts our environment. Burtynsky’s most ambitious project takes him into uncharted territory as a visual artist to illustrate the devastation’s increased sense of urgency.
Read the full interview here.
Read MoreBy Mariam Matti
UofT News
Earlier in his career as a photographer and artist, Edward Burtynsky saw an opportunity to dedicate his life’s work to a single idea: humanity's impact on the planet.
In the 1980s, Burtynsky saw the growing sustainability challenges posed by the combination of heavy industry and billions of people.
His work would ultimately take him all over the world – and garner numerous awards and accolades – as he captured how humanity is reshaping the Earth through resource extraction, urban sprawl and manufacturing, to name a few.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreCuriocity
The whole immersive art experience might be a little played out in Toronto, but we definitely think this is an exception to the rule. Edward Burtynsky, who is one of Canada’s preeminent photographers and artists, is putting on a new experience called “In the Wake of Progress“.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreElsa Lam
Canadian Architect
Toronto’s Yonge Dundas Square is usually a canyon of advertising. But in a commission for this June’s Luminato festival, photographer Ed Burtynsky transformed the 22 screens in the square into a canvas for an immersive media piece entitled In the Wake of Progress.
Drawing on footage from Burtynsky’s 40 years of photography and film projects, the 20-minute wordless piece traces humanity’s fall from Eden: moving from old growth forests to lands swept barren by clear cuts, and thence to suburbs, skyscrapers, and slums. Burtynsky’s iconic images of mountain-deep Carrera marble quarries, post-industrial shipbreakers, and blood red copper tailing pools make an appearance, the latter set to an especially ominous passage of chanting in the cinematic soundtrack by Phil Strong.
Read the full article here.
Read MoreCBC Q with Tom Power
When Edward Burtynsky was a student, a teacher gave him an assignment that would change his life. He was told to go out and capture photographic evidence of humans. Burtynsky imagined what an alien would take photos of — the way humans have changed the planet on a massive scale — and it’s been his life’s work ever since. The Canadian photographer spoke with Tom Power about his biggest project yet, In the Wake of Progress, which highlights the ways humanity impacts the planet.
Listen here.
Read MoreChris Dart
CBC Arts
"In the Wake of Progress," the latest exhibit from photographic artist Edward Burtynsky, has been a long time coming — in more ways than one.
The exhibit — which is part of this year's Luminato Festival — consists of photos of human's impact on the world around them, selected from across Burtynsky's 40-plus year career. The pictures are displayed across 22 massive outdoor screens at Toronto's Yonge-Dundas Square, screens that usually show advertisements, and choreographed to music by composer Phil Strong.
It was also, in an alternate world, supposed to happen two years ago.
Read the full article here.
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 Laura Decarufel
The Kit
As a culture, we’ve long relied on artists to both interpret our existing reality and to light a path to the future. Edward Burtynsky, 67, has been acting as such a prophet for 40 years. In his large-scale photographs of shipyards in China, logged forests in B.C. and African landfills dotted with Dollarama bags, he captures both the majestic beauty of our world—and the scale of the problems facing it.
Burtynsky’s latest project, “In the Wake of Progress,” is an immersive installation and a cri de coeur about the threat of climate change. (It debuts in June as part of Toronto’s Luminato arts festival and will then travel internationally.) The installation is two-pronged: a public art piece in Yonge-Dundas Square and a considerably more private experience, where viewers sit in a darkened room surrounded by three massive screens showing still photos and video—taken by Burtynsky across his career, around the world—all set to music that is alternately menacing and hopeful, courtesy of birdsong from ancient B.C. forests. As a career retrospective, it’s impressive. As a work of art, it’s beautiful, heartbreaking, galvanizing.
Read the full interview here.
Read MoreHosted by Ben Luke and Tom Seymour
This Week in Art |The Art Newspaper
This week, our associate editor Tom Seymour talks to the photographer Edward Burtynsky as he is recognised for his Outstanding Contribution to his medium in the Sony World Photography Awards. He discusses the Russian invasion and his Ukrainian heritage.
Listen here.
Read MoreCBC Radio
As It Happens
When Edward Burtynsky was honoured for his contribution to photography on Tuesday, he decided to share the spotlight with Ukrainians who are documenting the war with their cameras.
Burtynsky, a Canadian photographer of Ukrainian descent, won the prize for outstanding contribution to photography at the Sony World Photography Awards in London.
Read the Q&A and listen to the episode here.
Read More