Interview with Edward Burtynsky from The Tyee

A very informative interview with Edwrad Burtynsky can be found here on The Tyee website:

Framing Global Capitalism

A couple of quotes about his influences stand out:

“Around 1976-77, I realized that a new visual language was forming. I became aware of the work of Bern and Hilla Becher and the New Topographics group [whose photographs observe the effects of humans on the land]. I realized that one could bring a new visual language to bear on the landscape that we’re changing, on the way we changing it. It was a photographic work that was not a celebration of the land as Ansel Adams’ but a kind of a social critique of man’s interaction with the land, a question mark about the progress. To me it was a far more compelling and contemporary world view within the medium of photography and within the history of photography.”

“I am more in-line with the documentary tradition than the photojournalism tradition, although, even within the documentary tradition, I am far more interested in creating and evolving a visual language than telling a particular narrative. For example, photographing nickel mines, I am not looking for a story on how we mine for nickel. I am looking for metaphors for the scale at which we now operate in nature, how we are becoming a force in nature, and how the landscape reflects that.”

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