| Edward Burtynsky | |
|---|---|
Edward Burtynsky in 2005 |
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| Born | February 22, 1955 St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Occupation | photographer, artist |
| Website | |
| http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/index.html | |
Edward Burtynsky OC is a Canadian photographer and artist who has achieved international recognition for his large-format photographs of industrial landscapes. His work is housed in more than fifteen major museums including the Guggenheim Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.[1]
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Burtynsky was born in St. Catharines, Ontario. His parents had immigrated to Canada in 1951 from Ukraine and his father found work on the production line at the local General Motors plant.[2] Burtynsky recalls playing by the Welland Canal and watching ships pass through the locks. When he was 11, his father purchased a darkroom, including cameras and instruction manuals, from a widow whose late-husband practiced amateur photography.[3] With his father, Burtynsky learned how to make black-and-white photographic prints and together with his older sister established a small business taking portraits at the local Ukrainian center.[2] In the early '70s, Burtynsky found work in printing and he started night classes in photography, later enrolling at the Ryerson Polytechnical Institute.[4]
From the mid-1970s to early 1980s, Burtynsky formally studied graphic arts and photography. He obtained a diploma in graphic arts from Niagara College in Welland, Ontario, in 1976, and a BAA in Photographic Arts (Media Studies Program) from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto, Ontario, in 1982.[5][6]
Burtynsky's most famous photographs are sweeping views of landscapes altered by industry: mine tailings, quarries, scrap piles. The grand, awe-inspiring beauty of his images is often in tension with the compromised environments they depict. He has made several excursions to China to photograph that country's industrial emergence, and construction of one of the world's largest engineering projects, the Three Gorges Dam.
His early influences include Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Eadweard Muybridge, and Carleton Watkins, whose prints he saw at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the early 1980s. Another group whose body of work shares similar themes and photographic approaches to Burtynsky's work are the photographers who were involved in the exhibitionNew Topographics.
The bulk of Burtynsky's exhibited photography was taken with a large format field camera on large 4x5-inch sheet film and developed into high-resolution, large-dimension prints (of approximately 50x60 inches). He often positions himself to get a high-vantage over the landscape using elevated platforms, the natural topography, and on occasion helicopters. Burtynsky describes the act of taking a photograph in terms of "The Contemplated Moment", evoking "The Decisive Moment" of Henri Cartier-Bresson. More recently, he has begun using a digital camera for some of his photographs.
Between 1983 and 1985, Burtynsky produced two photographic series entitled "Mines" and "Homesteads."
"Mines" was photographed in Bingham Valley, Utah; Sudbury, Ontario; Butte, Montana; Highland Valley, British Columbia and Revelstoke, British Columbia. "Homesteads" was photographed in Bingham Valley, Utah; Fort Macleod, Alberta; Upper New York State; Toronto, Ontario; Walkerville, Montana and Browning, Montana and locations in British Columbia.
In 1985 he produced the "Railcuts" series, photographed in Skihist Provincial Park, Fraser River, Thompson River, and Hope in British Columbia.
Between 1991 and 1992 he produced the "Quarry" series in Rutland and Barre, Vermont.
The "Carrara Marble Quarries" series was photographed in Carrara, Italy in 1991-92, e.g. Rock of Ages #59 of 1991.
Burtynsky chaired the board of directors of the online sustainability magazine Worldchanging until it was taken over by Architecture for Humanity in September 2011.[7] He sits on the board of CONTACT, Toronto's international festival of photography.[8]
In 1985 Burtynsky established Toronto Image Works, a facility that offers darkroom rentals, equipment use and presently offers digital new-media courses. In 1986 the facility opened a gallery space which displays the work of local and international artists. He is currently president of Toronto Image Works.[9]
In 2006, Burtynsky was the subject of the internationally acclaimed, award-winning documentary film, Manufactured Landscapes, that was shown at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Documentary Competition.[10]
In July 2008 Burtynsky delivered a seminar for the Long Now Foundation entitled "The 10,000 year Gallery".[11] The foundation promotes very long-term thinking and is managing various projects including the Clock of the Long Now, which is a clock designed to run for 10,000 years. Burtynsky was invited by clock designer Danny Hillis to contribute to the Long Now project, and Burtynsky proposed a gallery to accompany the clock. In his seminar, he suggested that a gallery of photographs which captured the essence of their time, like the cave paintings at Lascaux, could be curated annually and then taken down and stored. He outlined his research into a carbon-transfer process for printing photographs that would use inert stone pigments suspended in a hardened gelatine colloid and printed onto thick watercolour paper. He believes that these photographs would persist over the 10,000 year time-frame when stored away from moisture.
In April 2006 Burtynsky was named Officer of the Order of Canada. He is also the recipient of three honorary doctorates: in Laws, from Queen's University, Kingston; in Fine Arts in Photography Study from Ryerson University, Toronto; and in Fine Arts, from Montserrat College of Art, Boston. He was awarded the esteemed TED Prize in 2005.