By Alexander Hawkins | AnOther Magazine “Beauty” is not a word Edward Burtynsky wants associated with his large-format photographs of breathtaking industrial landscapes. Nevertheless, the Canadian photographer has been accused of aestheticising disaster. For almost 40 years, Burtynsky’s unsettling work has taken a bird’s-eye-view on how industry is spectacularly transforming nature, and our world. His interest, he insists,…

By Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky and Nicholas de Pencier The Walrus Forests are indispensable to life on this planet. Nearly 1.6 billion people rely on them as sources of food, income, or shelter. Humans have altered over 75 percent of ice-free land on the planet with agriculture, mining, urbanization, and industrialization. And around half of the…

By Tom Seymour | Wallpaper* he Anthropocene photographs are huge, imposing and impossibly detailed, designed to stimulate in us a sense of awe – both of the beauty of the natural world, and the destruction our species has wrought upon it. They are images, the photographer says, ‘of a predator species run amok’. But few realise how personal…

By Nicola Davidson | WIRED UK In 1976, when he was a first-year student of photography at Ryerson Polytechnic Institute, in Toronto, Edward Burtynsky was given an assignment that would come to shape his working life. Instructed to go out and photograph “evidence of man”, he initially thought of ruins. What better evidence of man’s passing…

By Bel Jacobs | HowNow Magazine In face of current environmental events, debate around whether or not mankind now exists in the Anthropocene  – an epoch in which human are the single most defining force on the planet and introduced in 2000 by chemist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Jozef Crutzen- seems to akin to re-arranging…

By Anna Savitskaya Artdependence Magazine Two simultaneous, complementary exhibitions of Anthropocene opened on September 28th at the National Gallery of Canada (NCG) and the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). The website dedicated to the exhibition defines Anthropocene as the current proposed geological epoch, in which humans are the primary cause of permanent planetary change. Three major artists: world-renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky and multiple…

By Leslie Hook Financial Times The word “ Anthropocene” first entered popular use about 20 years ago as scientists looked for a way to describe a new geologic era, one defined by the impact of humans. Earlier eras have been linked to climatic shifts caused by asteroids or ice ages, but now it is human…

By Fatema Ahmed | Apollo Magazine The Canadian photographer talks to Fatema Ahmed about The Anthropocene Project – two exhibitions, a film and a book exploring man’s effect on Earth and capturing the spirit of what some scientists consider to be a new geological epoch. When did you become interested in the Anthropocene, and how did this project…

By Mike Devlin | Times Colonist A new documentary from a team that includes acclaimed director Jennifer Baichwal looks at the impact modern civilization has had on Earth over thousands of years, and the results aren’t pretty. There have been significant hydrologic, atmospheric, biospheric and geological shifts during the Holocene period, most of which have been brought…

By Rachel MacFarlane | FORMAT Magazine The renowned Canadian photographer discusses his latest work, which uses AR, film, and photography to document environmental change. October has been a busy month for Edward Burtynsky. Most significantly, the Canadian artist released a new series of his photographs, titled Anthropocene, on until November 3 at Toronto’s Nicholas Metivier Gallery. With collaborators…