THE RESIDUAL LANDSCAPES
2009-03-09The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies is thrilled to unveil its new feature exhibition, Edward Burtynsky: The Residual Landscapes, showcasing 25 years of the photographer’s inspiring and thought-provoking large-scale photographs.
Featured opposite Nickel Tailings #30, Sudbury, Ontario, 1996.
Edward Burtynsky is one of Canada’s most respected and celebrated photographers. He’s made it his life’s work to document humanity’s impact on the planet. Burtynsky’s riveting images, as beautiful as they are disturbing, capture views of the earth altered by mankind. A mountain of tires, a river of fluorescent orange sludge from a nickel mine and a massive man-made canyon carved deep into the earth to reach its oil riches – these are just some of the many eye-opening images in this moving exhibition.
“These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear,” said Edward Burtynsky, photographer. “We are drawn by desire – a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.”
Burtynsky’s remarkable photographic depictions of global industrial landscapes are in the collections of several major museums around the world including the National Gallery of Canada, the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
This exhibition runs until the 26th of April 2009
The Whyte Museum
111 Bear Street
Banff
Alberta
Canada
