Edward Burtynsky The Great Acceleration

The Great Acceleration, the first solo institutional exhibition of world renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky’s work in New York City in over twenty years, reveals the depth of Burtynsky's investigation into the human alteration of natural landscapes around the world, showing their present fragility and enduring beauty in equal measure.

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Curated by David Campany, Creative Director at ICP, this retrospective exhibition  will present over seventy photographs, including many of Burtynsky’s landmark images, some of which have never previously been shown, along with three ultra high-resolution murals. The exhibition will also include a visual and narrative timeline of Burtynsky’s creative life. Intentionally scheduled to extend through Climate Week NYC in September 2025, The Great Acceleration will serve not only as an urgent call for action, but will also give visitors the opportunity to appreciate the sublimity that remains in the landscape, while also deepening our understanding of the challenges that confront us today. In this way, The Great Accelerationupholds ICP’s long-standing and core commitment to present concerned photography that can inspire new audiences.

"The Great Acceleration" is an established term used to describe the rapid rise of human impact on our planet according to a range of measures, among them population growth, water usage, transportation, greenhouse gas emissions, resource extraction and food production, each of which Burtynsky has photographed the outward signs of at length and in great detail over the past forty years. From open pit mines across North America to oil derricks in Azerbaijan, from rice terraces in China to oil bunkering in Nigeria, Burtynsky has travelled across the world and back again as part of his restless and seemingly inexhaustible drive to discover the ways, both old and new, that organized human activity has transformed the natural world. Though already unified by both the precision and formal beauty that Burtynsky deploys to create each photograph, The Great Accelerationfurther underscores that, like their respective subjects, each project remains fundamentally interconnected.

Since the 1980s Burtynsky has remained steadfast in his commitment to document the evolving
relationship between contemporary life and the landscapes being remade by its demands.
Beginning in his native Canada, the exhibition quickly moves to establish the international scope
of his work while also highlighting the recurring subjects and themes that have continued to
occupy him—including the intertwining of fossil fuels and consumerism, global infrastructure,
precarious labor conditions and the challenges of mass recycling, among others—regardless of
where he has worked or with what new technologies.
Moving through the exhibition, we follow Burtynsky into marble quarries and factories, into
mining towns and industrialized farms. With him as our guide, we traverse across mega cities
and barren landscapes, across scrap yards and factories. Though widely known for his aerial
photographs that present epic views of the landscape, within which human presence can be
seen but loosely felt, Burtynsky just as often documents our collective activity up close and with
disarming intensity. Included in this exhibition are rarely-seen portraits he has made over the
years of workers from around the world, from factories in China to the shipbreaking coasts of
Bangladesh, which remind us of the intimately human scale at the heart of what his photographs
often show us from great distances

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About Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky is regarded as one of the world's most accomplished contemporary

photographers. His remarkable photographic depictions of global industrial landscapes

represent over 40 years of his dedication to bearing witness to the impact of humans on the

planet. Burtynsky's photographs are included in the collections of over 80 major museums

around the world. Major (touring) exhibitions include: BURTYNSKY: Extraction/Abstraction

(2024) which premiered at London’s Saatchi Gallery; Anthropocene (2018); Water (2013)

organized by the New Orleans Museum of Art & Contemporary Art Center, Louisiana; Oil (2009)

at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.; China (2005 five-year tour) and

Manufactured Landscapes (2003) at the National Gallery of Canada. Burtynsky’s distinctions

include the inaugural TED Prize in 2005, which he shared with Bono and Robert Fischell; the

Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts; the Outreach Award at the Rencontres

d’Arles; the Roloff Beny Book award and the 2018 Photo London Master of Photography Award.

In 2019 he was the recipient of the Arts & Letters Award at the Canadian Association of New

York’s annual Maple Leaf Ball and the 2019 Lucie Award for Achievement in Documentary

Photography. In 2020 he was awarded a Royal Photographic Society Honorary Fellowship and

in 2022 was honoured with the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award by the World

Photography Organization. In 2022 he was inducted into the International Photography Hall of

Fame and was named the 2022 recipient for the annual Pollution Probe Award. Most recently

he received the 2023 PHotoESPAÑA Award for Professional Career and was awarded with the

25th edition of the Pino Pascali Prize. Burtynsky was also a key production figure in the award-

winning documentary trilogy Manufactured Landscapes (dir. Jennifer Baichwal, 2006),

Watermark (dir. Baichwal and Burtynsky, 2013) and ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch (dir.

Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, and Burtynsky, 2018). All three films continue to play in festivals

around the world. Burtynsky currently holds nine honorary doctorate degrees.

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