Edward Burtynsky shares the stories behind his giant new photographs of dams, wells and other drippy things
Edward Burtynsky shares the stories behind his giant new photographs of dams, wells and other drippy things
Edward Burtynsky: Water
Nicholas Metivier Gallery, 451 King St. W.
To October 12
For Edward Burtynsky, bigger is always better. The Toronto photographer has shot vast Carrara quarries in Italy, collapsing factory ruins in China and cavernous mines in Australia. For his gallery shows, he blows up his photos as large as the Bayeux Tapestry, magnifying each speck, crag and shadow. It’s an approach that’s earned him international stardom—his photos hang in the Tate, the MoMA and the Guggenheim, and sell for as much as $40,000 apiece.
Water, Burtynsky’s latest exhibition, is his largest—and his most ideological. It focuses on the ways in which people around the world have manipulated water to feed the earth’s mushrooming population. He spent five years travelling in 10 countries, where he shot 24,000 images. This month, he’ll release the photographs in a book and display the series at the Nicholas Metivier Gallery on King West. After that, the show will travel to New York, London, San Francisco and Singapore.
The scale of the photos makes the world seem strange and unknowable. Chinese farmland evokes the psychedelic slopes of a Lawren Harris painting. Drained Indian stepwells resemble hand-painted tiles. And a dam on the Yangtze River looks like a towering steampunk fortress.
We asked Burtynsky to tell us the story behind our favourite shots.
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- <p>“For 2,000 years, rice farmers have been carving terraces into the contours of the valley so they catch the rainwater. Then they populate the area with eels and frogs to fertilize the water, and harvest them at the end of the season. It’s a sustainable way to farm: the system has been designed to regenerate without the need of artificial fertilizer.</p><br /> <br /> <p>“The photo looks like a helicopter shot, but I did it all from the ground—there were a lot of vantage points I could work from. I was there during one of the worst droughts they’d had in 100 years, and the air was full of dust. I had to wait in the village for days until I could get a clear shot.”</p>
- (Image: © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy of Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto/<br /> Howard Greenberg and Bryce Wolkowitz, New York)
- Rice terraces in Western Yunnan Province, China, 2012
- Rice terraces in Western Yunnan Province, China, 2012
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- <p>“I’m not a landscape photographer as much as a photographer of human systems imposed upon a landscape. When I started thinking about how humans have manipulated water, dams and aqueducts were an obvious choice—huge, man-made products meant to divert the natural flow. </p><br /> <br /> <p>“The thing that kills most reservoirs is the buildup of silt, which blocks up the dam. When the silt reaches the intake valve, you can’t generate electricity. So in China, dam operators do a silt release once a year at the Xiaolangdi. They unleash <br /> 30 million tonnes of silt from the dam at 260 billion litres per second. The force is remarkable—it lifts the silt up from the floor and moves it down the Yellow River to clear the reservoir. It’s a tourist attraction, like Niagara Falls.”</p>
- (Image: © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy of Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto/<br /> Howard Greenberg and Bryce Wolkowitz, New York)
- The Xiaolangdi Dam on the Yellow River, Henan Province, China, 2011
- The Xiaolangdi Dam on the Yellow River, Henan Province, China, 2011
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- <p>“Monegros is a desert area in the northern end of Spain that’s used as farmland. This photograph was taken just after the harvest, so the ground is all stubble. Different crops deplete different nutrients from the soil, which creates an incredible differentiation <br /> of colour.</p><br /> <br /> <p>“I hired a helicopter and a pilot, so I was able to go to some remote regions. It was a hard shot to get; I wasted a lot of time shooting too low. Eventually, I zoomed out and took this from 2,000 feet up, and the subject became more intriguing—the size of the valley systems, the shadows, the gradation of colour. Once I got up there, the whole thing came together.”</p>
- (Image: © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy of Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto/<br /> Howard Greenberg and Bryce Wolkowitz, New York)
- Dryland farming in Monegros County, Aragon, Spain, 2010
- Dryland farming in Monegros County, Aragon, Spain, 2010
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- <p>“When I first set out to do the water project, agriculture didn’t even occur to me. But then I realized that it constitutes 70 per cent of human water usage. If you fly over France or England, you see what looks like a patchwork quilt. All of that used to be forests. We’ve reshaped the planet through agriculture. </p><br /> <br /> <p>“In the Texas Panhandle, the Ogallala Aquifer holds almost four quadrillion litres of water. Farmers pump it out on a massive scale to feed crops like sorghum, corn and wheat. Meanwhile, in New Mexico next door, they’re running so low, they had to put restrictions on water so people would stop growing irrigation-intensive crops.”</p>
- (Image: © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy of Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto/<br /> Howard Greenberg and Bryce Wolkowitz, New York)
- Farmland in the High Plains, Texas, 2011
- Farmland in the High Plains, Texas, 2011
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- “Developers drained a swamp in Florida in 2003 and transformed it into a false waterfront. This suburb is called VeronaWalk. It’s a human desire to be by the water, which has a calming effect and taps into our primordial selves. Plus, so many Florida waterfront homes have pools—water floating in water. The mosquitoes are so bad there that each pool is screened in with a bug net.”
- (Image: © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy of Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto/<br /> Howard Greenberg and Bryce Wolkowitz, New York)
- Man-made waterfront, Naples, Florida, 2012
- Man-made waterfront, Naples, Florida, 2012
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- “Maha Kumbh Mela is the world’s largest communal bath; every third year, millions of Hindus make a pilgrimage, usually to the Ganges River, to soak and perform religious rites. For this shot, I couldn’t get the access I needed: the government wouldn’t let me shoot the festival on the day of, since there were so many people bathing who didn’t want to be shot. They wouldn’t let me set up my 50-foot pneumatic pole, either, in case it caused a stampede. In the end, I was able to shoot the day before the event. I like the shot, but I think I could have gone further with it.”
- (Image: © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy of Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto/<br /> Howard Greenberg and Bryce Wolkowitz, New York)
- A religious pilgrimage by the Ganges River, Allahabad, India, 2013
- A religious pilgrimage by the Ganges River, Allahabad, India, 2013
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- “The steps are so beautiful—they look like inverted pyramids or ziggurats. Hundreds of years ago, the early settlers of Rajasthan built the wells as a way to capture water at the water table level—the underground layer where the rocks and soil are saturated with water—and collect rainwater. It was an innovative way to inhabit a desert region. The monsoons would fill the wells to the brim, and as the water went down, villagers could just walk down the stairs to the water’s edge. The wells are rarely used now, since India is pumping out much of its water from underground. They’re just dried up monuments to the past.”
- (Image: © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy of Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto/<br /> Howard Greenberg and Bryce Wolkowitz, New York)
- A stepwell in Amber, Rajasthan, India, 2010
- A stepwell in Amber, Rajasthan, India, 2010
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![](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://torontolife.com/culture/all-wet-edward-burtynsky/&title=Edward Burtynsky shares the stories behind his giant new photographs of dams, wells and other drippy things&picture=https://torontolife.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/all-wet-edward-burtynsky-01-624x416.jpg&description=[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="656"] (Image: © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy of Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto/Howard Greenberg and Bryce Wolkowitz, New York)[/caption]
Edward Burtynsky: Water
Nicholas Metivier Gallery, 451 King St. W.
To October 12
For Edward Burtynsky, bigger is always better. The Toronto photographer has shot vast Carrara quarries in Italy, collapsing factory ruins in China and cavernous mines in Australia. For his gallery shows, he blows up his photos as large as the Bayeux Tapestry, magnifying each speck, crag and shadow. It’s an approach that’s earned him international stardom—his photos hang in the Tate, the MoMA and the Guggenheim, and sell for as much as $40,000 apiece.
Water, Burtynsky’s latest exhibition, is his largest—and his most ideological. It focuses on the ways in which people around the world have manipulated water to feed the earth’s mushrooming population. He spent five years travelling in 10 countries, where he shot 24,000 images. This month, he’ll release the photographs in a book and display the series at the Nicholas Metivier Gallery on King West. After that, the show will travel to New York, London, San Francisco and Singapore.
The scale of the photos makes the world seem strange and unknowable. Chinese farmland evokes the psychedelic slopes of a Lawren Harris painting. Drained Indian stepwells resemble hand-painted tiles. And a dam on the Yangtze River looks like a towering steampunk fortress.
We asked Burtynsky to tell us the story behind our favourite shots.
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