{"id":48504,"date":"2025-07-08T11:02:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T11:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/48504\/"},"modified":"2025-07-08T11:02:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T11:02:18","slug":"a-gods-eye-view-of-earths-destruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/48504\/","title":{"rendered":"A God\u2019s-Eye-View of Earth\u2019s Destruction\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration<\/a> at the International Center of Photography contains the artist\u2019s largest ever print, which is saying something. Across a celebrated 40-plus-year career, Burtynsky has been renowned for his work\u2019s ambition and scalar play. His fantastic images, often taken from aerial vantages, depict landscapes modified by human industry, from a stepped mine resembling an amphitheater (\u201cMines #17, Lornex Open Pit Copper Mine, Highland Valley, British Columbia, Canada,\u201d from 1985) to a salt pan whose multicolored pond rows evoke a painter\u2019s palette (\u201cSalt Pan #20, Little Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India,\u201d from 2016). The large formats and supra-human perspectives render the Earth alien, potentially confronting the viewer not only with our species\u2019 collateral ecological harms but also our estrangement from them.<\/p>\n

Even by that standard, the exhibition\u2019s 28-by-28-foot mural \u201cPivot Irrigation #8, High Plains, Texas Panhandle, USA\u201d (2012) stands out. The distant overhead view and subdued color palette transform farmland into an almost abstract composition, in which the pictorial space is divided into textured, geometric browns on one side and alternating vertical stripes of washed out blues and grays on the other. A teensy farmstead occupies the bottom left corner and the roads running parallel to the edges of the picture plane serve as a clever framing device. But the two-story-tall print\u2019s physical size produces its most dramatic effects. It dominates the central gallery, dwarfing visitors in a manner akin to the quarry cliffs that sometimes loom over the ant-like human figures in Burtynsky\u2019s other landscapes, such as the miners digging for cobalt, for a couple dollars a day, in \u201cDry Tailings #1, Kolwezi, Democratic Republic of Congo\u201d (2024).<\/p>\n

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\t\tInstallation view of Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration at the International Center of Photography (photo Louis Bury\/Hyperallergic)<\/p>\n

Curator David Campany\u2019s approach encapsulates the \u201cbigger is better\u201d ethos that Burtynsky\u2019s work at once critiques and embodies. The scope of the artist\u2019s environmentalist muckraking matches the scope of the iniquities it portrays; for decades, Burtynsky has pursued research leads around the globe to capture yet more examples of civilization\u2019s terraforming. Early in his career, before the term \u201cAnthropocene\u201d became common in academic and artistic circles, such images offered a prescient vision of large-scale anthropogenic changes that were typically out of sight and out of mind. But as others have caught up to and even surpassed that vision (such as philosopher Benjamin Bratton\u2019s concept of \u201cplanetary scale computation<\/a>\u201d), and its style has remained mostly the same, god\u2019s-eye-view consciousness raising feels more and more like a pretext for aesthetic dazzle.<\/p>\n

Burtynsky\u2019s dazzle serves a psychological rather than a moral function. It can provoke in viewers the uncomfortable recognition that harmful ecological realities nonetheless appear beguiling. But it can also occlude the human-scaled implications of those realities. On the central gallery\u2019s terrace level, Campany has helpfully included examples of Burtynsky\u2019s lesser known work: early 1980s portraits of food plant laborers; studies of marshlands taken during the COVID-19 lockdown. While these series lack the wow factor of the artist\u2019s panoramic work, they evidence his eye for formal patterns and keen details. But it\u2019s hard to pay attention to these more intimate and ordinary images when you can look down from the terrace and marvel at how \u201cPivot Irrigation #8\u201d towers over the people and the artworks in the gallery below.<\/p>\n

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\t\tInstallation view of Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration at the International Center of Photography featuring \u201cPivot Irrigation #8, High Plains, Texas Panhandle, USA\u201d (2012) (photo Louis Bury\/Hyperallergic)
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\t\tEdward Burtynsky, \u201cMines #13, Inco \u2013 Abandoned Mine Shaft, Crean Hill Mine, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada\u201d (1984) (\u00a9 Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York)
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\t\tEdward Burtynsky, \u201cDry Tailings #1, Kolwezi, Democratic Republic of Congo\u201d (2024) (photo Louis Bury\/Hyperallergic)
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\t\tEdward Burtynsky, \u201cTailings #1, Kalgoorlie Western Australia Australia\u201d (2007) (photo Louis Bury\/Hyperallergic)
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\t\tEdward Burtynsky, \u201cBreezewood, Pennsylvania, USA\u201d (2008) (\u00a9 Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York)
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\t\tEdward Burtynsky, \u201cSalt Pan #20, Little Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India\u201d (2016) (photo Louis Bury\/Hyperallergic)
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\t\tEdward Burtynsky, \u201cPolyfoam Resurrections, Deer Bust, Denver, Colorado, USA\u201d (1982) (\u00a9 Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York)<\/p>\n

Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration<\/a> continues at the International Center of Photography (84 Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan) through September 28. The exhibition was curated by David Campany.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration at the International Center of Photography contains the artist\u2019s largest ever print, which…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":48505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[648,1032,1033,37088,171,37089,405,3092,11853,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-48504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-edward-burtynsky","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-international-center-of-photography","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-photography","16":"tag-reviews","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114817279329262776","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}