These landscapes aren't breaking news or necessarily even illegal. These are intentional, purposeful landscapes, whether to extend our cities or build a mine or put a road in or clear a forest. I've been photographing that which has been intended by us; it's not an accident.

Edward Burtynsky

Categorized in : Road Accident Forest News

I can go into the wilderness and not see anyone for days and experience a kind of space that hasn't changed for tens of thousands of years. Having that experience was necessary to my perception of how photography can look at the changes humanity has brought about in the landscape. My work does become a kind of lament.

Edward Burtynsky

space photography years

I wish my artwork could persuade millions of people to join a global conversation about sustainability.

Edward Burtynsky

sustainability wish people

Somebody referred to what I do as subliminal activism, which I like.

Edward Burtynsky

subliminal activism

Like all animals, human beings have always taken what they want from nature. But we are the rogue species. We are unique in our ability to use resources on a scale and at a speed that our fellow species can't.

Edward Burtynsky

unique taken animal

Digital photography and Photoshop have made it very easy for people to take pictures. It's a medium that allows a lot of mediocre stuff to get through.

Edward Burtynsky

photography stuff people

I think the environmental movement has failed in that it's used the stick too much; it's used the apocalyptic tone too much; it hasn't sold the positive aspects of being environmentally concerned and trying to pull us out.

Edward Burtynsky

environmental trying thinking

Sometimes you don't know why you're doing something. You're intuitively following, to see where it leads.

Edward Burtynsky

following knows sometimes

I wish I could create an IMAX film that would make my work accessible to a broader audience.

Edward Burtynsky

audience film wish

Water, like many other resources is harvested, transported and used throughout all aspects of society. Unlike other resources, water is critical to the survival of all forms of life. The underlying question that sits at the core of my exploration is to what degree can we shape water before it begins to shape us.

Edward Burtynsky

degrees survival water

I wish we could launch a ground-breaking competition that motivates kids to invent new ideas in sustainable living.

Edward Burtynsky

competition kids ideas

It's uncannily like the original.

Edward Burtynsky

top-news

When I look at green trees on a sunny day, I don't know how to make an interesting picture of that.

Edward Burtynsky

picture day look green

I have a fondness for when the landscape becomes surreal.

Edward Burtynsky

becomes fondness landscape surreal

Humans can really reveal themselves through what they choose to see as the most important or meaningful detail in an image.

Edward Burtynsky

image choose see important

Good governance takes behavior that is negative or not helpful to the greater good of society, whether it's polluting behaviour, plastics, or whatever, and taxes the behaviour.

Edward Burtynsky

good society behavior negative

As artists, we can help, visually and intellectually, to make people understand that, at some point, we have to accept that it is our collective impact that is putting the whole planet in jeopardy.

Edward Burtynsky

help accept understand people

The bigger question is how does a rogue species called humans - whose population just blew through the seven billion mark on it's way to nine billion members - manage to survive the next century on a planet with finite resources, without destroying its delicate balance in the process.

Edward Burtynsky

survive balance process way

In our ephemeral information age, people think we've left behind the stone, bronze, and iron ages. But they're all still going on - we use tonnes of this stuff every day. You just have to look.

Edward Burtynsky

day you age people

I'm of the belief that you pursue your interests, you pull it all in, and you sort it out later.

Edward Burtynsky

your out you belief

One thing that's consistent in all of my work is that these aren't accidents; they're all conscious landscapes. They're all things that we're doing and that we have done through our legal and social systems and structures of capitalism.

Edward Burtynsky

legal doing capitalism work