Edward Burtynsky on climate, abstraction, and hanging photos like paintings

Ravi Ghosh | British Journal of Photography | 23rd February 2024

Burtynsky wants his landscape photographs to have some of the qualities of abstract painting. He wants an “all-overness” of the image and the whole image surface to be “active” – just like a Jackson Pollock. This, he hopes, will disorient the viewer and prompt the question ‘what am I looking at’? Those aesthetic effects notwithstanding, everyone knows the subject matter is despoilation. As one critic observes about Burtynsky’s current show, “It’s room after room of bludgeoning you with evil gorgeousness.”