Photo London’s Master of Photography in 2018 – A Talk with Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky is a Master of Photography – and not just because that is his honorable title at this year’s Photo London.

This Canadian fine art photographer certainly is one of the most prolific visual artists today, with a practice that chronicles the impacts of the human kind on its planet. From sawmills and oil bunkers in Nigeria to the salt pans in India and mines in Australia and Canada, his imagery is a striking reminder of what a man’s greed and carelessness can do to landscapes that mean life.

With an extraordinary eye and a curiosity to push the photographic medium to its technical limits, Edward Burtynsky started creating his astonishing portfolio in the 1980s, tackling topics such as urbanization, industrialization and extraction.

In 2018, the visitors of Photo London will have the chance to see a sneak peek of certain elements of his brand new body of work – a five-year multidisciplinary project created with long time collaborators Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier: The Anthropocene Project. This sneak peek includes a presentation of a mural-sized print of a marble quarry in Carrara, Italy from a frontal perspective, utilizing a programmable tripod head in conjunction with his digital camera. The resulting image is comprised of 122 50-megapixel files. Burtynsky’s Photo London exhibition will also include new artworks with which the audience can interact in Augmented Reality.

As this surely promises to be an unforgettable experience for Photo London visitors, we caught up with Mr. Burtynsky to discuss his thought process and current world issues, in the latest Widewalls Podcast dedicated to art professionals.

Photo London’s Master of Photography in 2018 – A Talk with Edward Burtynsky

Photo London will take place at Somerset House between May 17th and 20th, 2018.

For more podcast interviews with world’s leading art professionals, make sure you follow Widewalls on SoundCloud!

Featured image: Edward Burtynsky – Highland Valley #8, Teck Cominco, Open Pit Copper Mine, Logan Lake, British Columbia, Canada, 2008. Photo © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Metivier Gallery, Toronto / Flowers Gallery, London.