Anthropocene

Environmental revelations about a desecrated planet are more profound in the book than in the exhibition and film.

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Big Lonely Doug, more than 200 feet tall and 1,000 years old, is a Douglas fir near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island. But I first saw it in Ottawa with the help of an iPad and augmented reality, unbelievably growing from the floor of the National Gallery of Canada as part of the exhibition Anthropocene.

I spotted the tree again in the film Anthropocene. But I did not really understand its significance until I read the book Anthropocene and discovered the forest around this giant tree had been clear-cut. Doug was deliberately saved, but without the protection of neighbouring trees, high winds could topple the old guy.

The book provides the missing context for many other horrific environmental stories fleetingly depicted in the exhibition and film, from the extinction of white rhinos, to disappearing coral reefs and industrial pollution, even for things like the lithium-ion batteries of electric cars, supposedly a hopeful technology to thwart climate change.

The exhibition, the movie and the book are joint products of Toronto photographer Edward Burtynsky and his film collaborators Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier. Read the book first. Its pro-environment message comes through much more clearly than in the exhibition or movie.

The exhibition, a joint project with the Art Gallery of Ontario, is dominated by Burtynsky’s large-scale, brilliantly coloured photographs of the ways humans are torturing the world through farming, mining, logging, hunting and other practices.

Andrea Kunard, one of the show’s curators, points to the familiar ways Burtynsky addresses his themes, some of which have been featured in previous projects, including Manufactured Landscapes, which brilliantly exposes the scale of global industry, and Watermark, about threats to the world’s aqueous environment.

“Burtynsky presents disturbing subject matter in a visually alluring manner to capture the viewer’s attention and encourage thoughtfulness,” says Kunard.

But does the “alluring” outweigh the “disturbing” in the exhibition? The dazzling documentary film raises a similar question.

The book is about the size of a regular hardcover novel. That means Burtynsky’s photographs are small. They are grittier than the large-scale, flashy exhibition images and there are accompanying scientific essays that provide additional context.

Here, the environmental message is more “disturbing” and less “alluring.” We can understand what Anthropocene really means – a new era in which humans are destroying the planet. ■

Anthropocene by Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier: Art Gallery of Ontario and Goose Lane Editions, 2018. (A coffee-table-style 236-page book of the same title from German publisher Steidl, with larger-format images, essays and specially commissioned poems by Margaret Atwood, was delayed in production. Limited quantities are now making their way to booksellers.)