“If you are going to have only one Burtynsky book, this is the one.” Upon this recommendation from a knowledgeable friend, I dove into the latest book on the work of world-renowned Canadian photographer, Edward Burtynsky. The new take on his 45-year career accompanies the exhibition Edward Burtynsky: Extraction/Abstraction at the Saatchi Gallery, which was shown Feb. 14 to May 6, 2024, in London, and will travel to Italy later this summer.
The book affords a deeply moving experience in its own right.
Steidl GmbH Co. OHG
The exhibition, curated by Marc Mayer, former director of the National Gallery of Canada, offers a new approach. The brilliant introductory essay by Simon Schama opens with the question at the crux of Burtynsky’s work, “Can art save the world?”
Mayer underscores Burtynsky’s abiding interest in abstraction and gathers from his multitude of projects thematically: Agriculture, Extraction, Manufacturing & Infrastructure and Waste. Burtynsky’s visual language is paramount in the selection of more than 130 colour plates. Our familiarity with mid-century painterly precepts of mark-making, surface quality, spatial relationships and scale serves as an entry. Immersion into beauty, then comes a wallop when we understand what we are looking at. Mayer’s conversational long captions for each image are helpful, lacing aesthetics with often disturbing information on the subjects. The Timeline & Process Archive provides a valuable tool to contextualize the chronology of his projects and technical development.
Burtynsky concludes with a finale, On Hope, in which he writes,” These images are simply the reality of our times and reflect the enormous cost of supporting the lives of eight billion people on a finite planet.”
Edward Burtynsky: Extraction/Abstraction is gorgeous and substantial, published by Steidl, current masters of books on photography. The cover is tactile, the quality of the reproductions is superb, and the design is carefully considered, making it a pleasure for the reader to handle and absorb the content. ■
Edward Burtynsky: Extraction/Abstraction by Marc Mayer, Simon Schama and Edward Burtynsky, Steidl, 2024
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- Bianca Bosker: The Quest for the Meaning of Art
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