SNEAK PEEK: Edward Burtynsky

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Edward Burtynsky, "Natural Order #20, Grey County, Ontario Canada, Spring 2020," chromogenic colour photograph

48" x 64" (© Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, and Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto)

Edward Burtynsky has travelled the globe photographing dramatic scenes of environmental change – a massive dam project in China, a stark lithium mine in Chile, a polluted ship-breaking site on the coast of Bangladesh.

But the pandemic’s mandatory lockdown last spring saw the Toronto photographer retreat to the woods of the Bruce Peninsula along the southern shore of Georgian Bay. 

It was here, during the uncertainty and devastating losses wrought by another global traveller, the new coronavirus that's hitching a ride on human carriers, that Burtynsky created a series of photographs that speak to nature’s power of renewal. 

“From the frigid sleep of winter to the fecund urgency of spring, these images are an affirmation of the complexity, wonder and resilience of the natural order of things,” Burtynsky says. 

“I find myself gazing into an infinity of apparent chaos, but through that selective comtemplation, an order emerges – an enduring order that remains intact regardless of our human fate.”

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Edward Burtynsky, "Natural Order #19, Grey County, Ontario Canada, Spring 2020," chromogenic colour photograph

48" x 64" (© Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary, and Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto)

The images in his exhibition, Natural Order, at the Paul Kuhn Gallery in Calgary until Oct. 17, were shot with a new camera able to capture an amazing array of information. Painterly and abstract, his photographs capture unremarkable scenes of tangled brush, swampy land and leafless liched-flaked trees that become astonishing in their accretion of layered details and deft sense of colour.

Burtynsky first photographed this part of Grey County in 1981, when he took a road trip across the Bruce Peninsula and began shooting landscapes in earnest.

“During that Easter weekend in late April the snow was receding, revealing a dense tangle of matted grasses in what I refer to as quarter-colour tones,” he says. “With the frenetic urgency of new growth, leafless bushes, vines and trees were pushing through one another, wrangling for light and warmth and space. 

“I fell in love with the wild beauty of the area, so much so that by 1985 I resolved to purchase a piece of it. I wanted a property with which I could enjoy a long-term connection, and 35 years later my involvement with this place has become less about ownership and more about stewardship. 

“This piece of land always draws me back and returns me to first principles: that we are of, and inseparable from, nature.” ■ 

Edward Burtynsky: Natural Order at the Paul Kuhn Gallery in Calgary from Sept. 19 to Oct. 17, 2020.

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