Latest news with #EdwardBurtynsky
CNN
6 days ago
- Automotive
- CNN
Photographer finds surreal beauty — and few humans — inside a Chinese EV factory
Depicting endless rows of uniformed workers, Edward Burtynsky's iconic images of mid-2000s Chinese factories spoke to the seemingly inexhaustible human labor behind China's economic miracle. Just two decades later, the photographer's glimpse inside an electric car plant near Shanghai presents the opposite phenomenon: a complete absence of people. 'This is a factory built by humans but run by robots,' Burtynsky said of the facility, which is owned by top Chinese automaker BYD, on a Zoom call. 'I think it's a foreshadowing of where our future is.' BYD is at the forefront of a technological revolution. Last year, the company's annual revenues surpassed American rival Tesla's for the first time as it delivered 4.27 million vehicles (the 1.76 million EVs it produced in 2024 was just short of Tesla's 1.79 million, but the Chinese company also delivered around 2.5 million hybrid vehicles). Its success is, partly, down to price: BYD's entry-level model, the Seagull, starts at around $10,000 in China, a fraction of the $32,000 Tesla charges for its least expensive offering, the Model 3. And this affordability is, partly, down to highly automated manufacturing. In 2023, Burtynsky was granted rare access to a BYD plant in Changzhou, a city about two hours' drive from Shanghai. He obtained permission through the personal connections of British architect Sir Norman Foster, who wanted a cover image for Domus, a magazine he was guest-editing about the future of various industries, including transportation. The car giant was, Burtynsky said, 'very sensitive' about what he was allowed to document. But he believes he is the first independent photographer to be granted access to one of the company's factories. 'The humans are really just there to maintain the robots and keep the programs running clean,' he said of the secretive facility, referencing so-called 'dark factories,' which are so devoid of human workers they can operate without lights. 'Of course, corporations want that. There are no unions, there's no sick pay and, as long as there's electricity being fed to (the machines), they can work 24/7.' The standout image from Burtynsky's visit, simply titled 'BYD Manufacturing Facility #2,' paints a complex picture — not only of rapid change in China but of the ripple effects being felt in supply chains and labor markets around the world. The image's 'central character,' as the Canadian photographer put it, is an unfinished vehicle on a production line. Columns and beams around it repeat and recede to a vanishing point, producing a mesmerizing symmetry. The factory possessed a 'cathedral-esque' quality, he said. Related article Aerial photos reveal hidden beauty of airports In a sense, though, the photo is the last chapter in a story unfolding thousands of miles away. The image is part of a wider body of work, called 'China in Africa,' exploring what Burtynsky considers to be the 'next stage of globalization.' Currently on show at Hong Kong's Flowers Gallery, the series contrasts BYD's spotless factory with Chinese-owned rail crossings, warehouses and apparel factories in African countries including Ethiopia. Taken together, they depict what the photographer called China's 'complete vertical integration, from supply chain to finished product.' In other words, the human labor he saw in the mid-2000s hasn't gone — it's been offshored. And BYD, which is reported to have purchased lithium mines (for battery production) and mineral rights in countries such as Brazil, typifies the model, he said. 'They have literally secured their complete supply chain,' he said. Burtynsky is best known for aerial shots of dramatic landscapes scarred by agriculture and industry, from copper mines to salt pans. Though his images often portray human overexploitation, he considers them to be 'fairly neutral.' 'I do it in a sort of deadpan aesthetic,' he said of his photographic style. 'I don't try to lean the viewer one way or the other, in terms of 'This is bad' or 'This is good.' I'm not trying to manipulate you.' His photos almost always contain some moral ambiguity. 'Without copper,' he offered, illustrating the tradeoff between environmental degradation and human progress, 'I couldn't be having this conversation with you.' His depiction of BYD's operations — and automation at large — is arguably even more paradoxical. Car manufacturing may be resource-heavy but electric vehicles could help end our dependance on fossil fuels, making the factories a symbol of environmental recovery, not damage. What's more, China may not mourn the loss of jobs that Burtynsky described as 'dehumanizing.' And he would know: Long before taking up photography full time, he worked at factories owned by car companies General Motors and Ford. 'You feel like you're part of the machine,' he recalled. 'You're just being used for your human energy because they haven't (yet) found a machine that can do what you're doing.' The enclosed mechanical worlds of his factory photos also differ from his large-scale landscapes, where nature provides the sense of scale. But what unites all of Burtynsky's work is his attempt to evoke a 'sense of wonder.' 'I'm always trying to point my camera into worlds that we're not all that familiar with, that (invite) the kind of scrutiny that a big, large format print can give you,' he added. 'You can jump in and look at the small grease stain on the floor, or some splash of oil on the side of a wall in this pristine plant. You can see these little bits of everyday noise that take it to a more grounded, humanistic level.' 'China in Africa' is currently showing at Flowers Gallery in Hong Kong; 'The Great Acceleration' is on at the International Center of Photography in New York City until September 28, 2025.
CNN
7 days ago
- Automotive
- CNN
Photographer finds surreal beauty — and few humans — inside a Chinese EV factory
Depicting endless rows of uniformed workers, Edward Burtynsky's iconic images of mid-2000s Chinese factories spoke to the seemingly inexhaustible human labor behind China's economic miracle. Just two decades later, the photographer's glimpse inside an electric car plant near Shanghai presents the opposite phenomenon: a complete absence of people. 'This is a factory built by humans but run by robots,' Burtynsky said of the facility, which is owned by top Chinese automaker BYD, on a Zoom call. 'I think it's a foreshadowing of where our future is.' BYD is at the forefront of a technological revolution. Last year, the company's annual revenues surpassed American rival Tesla's for the first time as it delivered 4.27 million vehicles (the 1.76 million EVs it produced in 2024 was just short of Tesla's 1.79 million, but the Chinese company also delivered around 2.5 million hybrid vehicles). Its success is, partly, down to price: BYD's entry-level model, the Seagull, starts at around $10,000 in China, a fraction of the $32,000 Tesla charges for its least expensive offering, the Model 3. And this affordability is, partly, down to highly automated manufacturing. In 2023, Burtynsky was granted rare access to a BYD plant in Changzhou, a city about two hours' drive from Shanghai. He obtained permission through the personal connections of British architect Sir Norman Foster, who wanted a cover image for Domus, a magazine he was guest-editing about the future of various industries, including transportation. The car giant was, Burtynsky said, 'very sensitive' about what he was allowed to document. But he believes he is the first independent photographer to be granted access to one of the company's factories. 'The humans are really just there to maintain the robots and keep the programs running clean,' he said of the secretive facility, referencing so-called 'dark factories,' which are so devoid of human workers they can operate without lights. 'Of course, corporations want that. There are no unions, there's no sick pay and, as long as there's electricity being fed to (the machines), they can work 24/7.' The standout image from Burtynsky's visit, simply titled 'BYD Manufacturing Facility #2,' paints a complex picture — not only of rapid change in China but of the ripple effects being felt in supply chains and labor markets around the world. The image's 'central character,' as the Canadian photographer put it, is an unfinished vehicle on a production line. Columns and beams around it repeat and recede to a vanishing point, producing a mesmerizing symmetry. The factory possessed a 'cathedral-esque' quality, he said. Related article Aerial photos reveal hidden beauty of airports In a sense, though, the photo is the last chapter in a story unfolding thousands of miles away. The image is part of a wider body of work, called 'China in Africa,' exploring what Burtynsky considers to be the 'next stage of globalization.' Currently on show at Hong Kong's Flowers Gallery, the series contrasts BYD's spotless factory with Chinese-owned rail crossings, warehouses and apparel factories in African countries including Ethiopia. Taken together, they depict what the photographer called China's 'complete vertical integration, from supply chain to finished product.' In other words, the human labor he saw in the mid-2000s hasn't gone — it's been offshored. And BYD, which is reported to have purchased lithium mines (for battery production) and mineral rights in countries such as Brazil, typifies the model, he said. 'They have literally secured their complete supply chain,' he said. Burtynsky is best known for aerial shots of dramatic landscapes scarred by agriculture and industry, from copper mines to salt pans. Though his images often portray human overexploitation, he considers them to be 'fairly neutral.' 'I do it in a sort of deadpan aesthetic,' he said of his photographic style. 'I don't try to lean the viewer one way or the other, in terms of 'This is bad' or 'This is good.' I'm not trying to manipulate you.' His photos almost always contain some moral ambiguity. 'Without copper,' he offered, illustrating the tradeoff between environmental degradation and human progress, 'I couldn't be having this conversation with you.' His depiction of BYD's operations — and automation at large — is arguably even more paradoxical. Car manufacturing may be resource-heavy but electric vehicles could help end our dependance on fossil fuels, making the factories a symbol of environmental recovery, not damage. What's more, China may not mourn the loss of jobs that Burtynsky described as 'dehumanizing.' And he would know: Long before taking up photography full time, he worked at factories owned by car companies General Motors and Ford. 'You feel like you're part of the machine,' he recalled. 'You're just being used for your human energy because they haven't (yet) found a machine that can do what you're doing.' The enclosed mechanical worlds of his factory photos also differ from his large-scale landscapes, where nature provides the sense of scale. But what unites all of Burtynsky's work is his attempt to evoke a 'sense of wonder.' 'I'm always trying to point my camera into worlds that we're not all that familiar with, that (invite) the kind of scrutiny that a big, large format print can give you,' he added. 'You can jump in and look at the small grease stain on the floor, or some splash of oil on the side of a wall in this pristine plant. You can see these little bits of everyday noise that take it to a more grounded, humanistic level.' 'China in Africa' is currently showing at Flowers Gallery in Hong Kong; 'The Great Acceleration' is on at the International Center of Photography in New York City until September 28, 2025.
The Guardian
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Edward Burtynsky: ‘My photographs are like Rorschach tests'
Few if any photographers have done more than Edward Burtynsky to shape our view of the large-scale industrial production that is a constant, ever-expanding part of the capitalist system. Since the 1980s, he has created more than a dozen multiyear series, tackling extractive industries like mining and oil refining in India, China and Azerbaijan, traveling to such disparate places as Western Australia, Chile's Atacama desert and the so-called ship graveyards of Bangladesh. Often taken from high in the sky, his photos offer views of industrial landscapes that attend to color and pattern with a sophisticated eye reminiscent of abstract expressionism, while also forcing us to contend with the devastating transformations to the natural world required to sustain our way of life. Burtynsky's new show at the International Center of Photography in New York, titled The Great Acceleration, brings together some 70 photographs from a lifetime behind the lens. It seeks to offer a fitting survey of a masterful photographic career, and it debuts the largest photographic mural that Burtynsky has ever done. His relationship with the medium began when he was about 12, when he got his first camera. As a young child, he spent hour upon hour painting alongside his father, who had hoped to become an artist but ended up working in factories. After he learned to painstakingly sketch landscapes and paint with oils, the ease of photographs was a revelation. 'I just realized how in one fraction of a second I can create a landscape – just, boom, it's there,' Burtynsky told me. 'I loved how it was a modern, fast way to get your image, and I loved the darkroom, watching the image emerge.' Similarly, Burtynsky's relationship with the industrial world that has become his subject goes back to his formative years – originally trained as a tool and die maker, he came of age working within factories, seeing first-hand just how dirty, loud and dangerous they really were. 'When I saw the scale of industry, as a young 18-year-old working in these places,' Burtynsky said, 'I could tell that if we were going to become this population of all this growth that they were projecting, then all of this was just going to amplify, this all was just going to get bigger and more insane.' Turning away from such a life, Burtynsky began to study the graphic arts, and after a well-timed push from one of his instructors, he made the decision to receive formal instruction in photography. After spending so much time around heavy industry, he said, it was a revelation: 'All of a sudden, I'm exposed to the whole history of art, and the whole history of music, and the whole history of photography.' It was in school that Burtynsky got exposure to major influences like Eadweard Muybridge, Carleton Watkins, Caspar David Friedrich and painters of the New York school, particularly Jackson Pollock. It was there that he also began to develop his distinctive way of seeing the world. 'I really liked the kind of field painting, the compression of space, the gesture, the color fields, in abstract expressionism,' he said. 'So I started doing landscapes, but I said: 'I'm not just going to go out into the forest and do cliches like anybody else. I'm going to go and try to do Jackson Pollocks with a large-format camera. I'm going to try to attune my eye so I can find really complex spaces in nature that are almost like gesture paintings.'' In no small part because of that painterly eye, Burtynsky imbues his work with an undeniable beauty, a fact that has sometimes made critics uneasy. Shots like that of a enormous stepwell in Rajasthan, or the Chino mine in Silver City, New Mexico, are mesmerizing in their intricacy, their arrangement of color and the hypnotic way that Burtynsky has framed the innumerable lines within. If his photographs of environmental destruction are gorgeous, Burtynsky defends them on the ground that this pleasingness evokes the curiosity and engagement that leads to potentially fruitful dialogue. 'There are all sorts of issues that start to rise up. Like: are you aestheticizing the destruction of the planet?' he said. 'Well, that's not how I'm looking at it. But maybe. I'm really trying to find a visual language that has a painterly or surreal quality to it that shows the world we've evolved in a way that makes people engage with it, versus saying: 'That's just a banal picture of something that I'm not interested in.'' Burtynsky is clear about the fact that his images are meant to be not didactic but enigmatic, entry points and not endpoints. Although it is difficult to look at shots such as a wasteland full of discarded tires or a mountainside honeycombed by extractive mining without feeling a gut reaction of shame and eco-anxiety, his photographs are much more than just environmentalist agitprop. The artist takes pride in the many interpretations that his works can hold. 'My photographs are like Rorschach tests,' he said. 'It's like the teacher puts a picture in front of the class and it's like: what did you see? If they see environmental degradation, they see something out of the history of art. If they see something, like, technologically kind of advanced, or some curious way in which we do things as humans, each one of them is a legitimate reading of what they're seeing – the individual completes it. When people tell me about what they see in an image, I get to learn more about them than they probably learn about me.' In addition to delivering some of Burtynsky's most career-defining works, The Great Acceleration also shows lesser-known sides of the photographer – there are two pieces from his student days, a shot from a rarely seen series that he made exploring masculinity via taxidermy workshops, and never-before-shown portraits of individual workers who toil within the built landscapes that he specializes in. 'I would walk through these landscapes with my 2 1/4 camera, and every once in a while I'd see a person and say: 'Can I take your photograph?' It was always an acknowledgement of the sitter in their space, and just another way of showing that these are things that humans are doing,' he said. Burtynsky hopes that shows like The Great Acceleration offer a way to let a wider audience see what is happening in the world. He remains doubtful of art's ability to directly transform how governments and industry use our resources, but he does believe in the value of raising awareness and sparking curiosity. 'Artists are soft power, we're storytellers, we don't have the ability to influence or shape policy. What we can do is raise consciousness, absorb our experience of the world and move it through the medium of our choice. I'm trying to be a kind of conduit into what is happening.' Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration is on show at the International Center of Photography in New York until 28 September
The Guardian
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Edward Burtynsky: ‘My photographs are like Rorschach tests'
Few if any photographers have done more than Edward Burtynsky to shape our view of the large-scale industrial production that is a constant, ever-expanding part of the capitalist system. Since the 1980s, he has created more than a dozen multiyear series, tackling extractive industries like mining and oil refining in India, China and Azerbaijan, traveling to such disparate places as Western Australia, Chile's Atacama desert and the so-called ship graveyards of Bangladesh. Often taken from high in the sky, his photos offer views of industrial landscapes that attend to color and pattern with a sophisticated eye reminiscent of abstract expressionism, while also forcing us to contend with the devastating transformations to the natural world required to sustain our way of life. Burtynsky's new show at the International Center of Photography in New York, titled The Great Acceleration, brings together some 70 photographs from a lifetime behind the lens. It seeks to offer a fitting survey of a masterful photographic career, and it debuts the largest photographic mural that Burtynsky has ever done. His relationship with the medium began when he was about 12, when he got his first camera. As a young child, he spent hour upon hour painting alongside his father, who had hoped to become an artist but ended up working in factories. After he learned to painstakingly sketch landscapes and paint with oils, the ease of photographs was a revelation. 'I just realized how in one fraction of a second I can create a landscape – just, boom, it's there,' Burtynsky told me. 'I loved how it was a modern, fast way to get your image, and I loved the darkroom, watching the image emerge.' Similarly, Burtynsky's relationship with the industrial world that has become his subject goes back to his formative years – originally trained as a tool and die maker, he came of age working within factories, seeing first-hand just how dirty, loud and dangerous they really were. 'When I saw the scale of industry, as a young 18-year-old working in these places,' Burtynsky said, 'I could tell that if we were going to become this population of all this growth that they were projecting, then all of this was just going to amplify, this all was just going to get bigger and more insane.' Turning away from such a life, Burtynsky began to study the graphic arts, and after a well-timed push from one of his instructors, he made the decision to receive formal instruction in photography. After spending so much time around heavy industry, he said, it was a revelation: 'All of a sudden, I'm exposed to the whole history of art, and the whole history of music, and the whole history of photography.' It was in school that Burtynsky got exposure to major influences like Eadweard Muybridge, Carleton Watkins, Caspar David Friedrich and painters of the New York school, particularly Jackson Pollock. It was there that he also began to develop his distinctive way of seeing the world. 'I really liked the kind of field painting, the compression of space, the gesture, the color fields, in abstract expressionism,' he said. 'So I started doing landscapes, but I said: 'I'm not just going to go out into the forest and do cliches like anybody else. I'm going to go and try to do Jackson Pollocks with a large-format camera. I'm going to try to attune my eye so I can find really complex spaces in nature that are almost like gesture paintings.'' In no small part because of that painterly eye, Burtynsky imbues his work with an undeniable beauty, a fact that has sometimes made critics uneasy. Shots like that of a enormous stepwell in Rajasthan, or the Chino mine in Silver City, New Mexico, are mesmerizing in their intricacy, their arrangement of color and the hypnotic way that Burtynsky has framed the innumerable lines within. If his photographs of environmental destruction are gorgeous, Burtynsky defends them on the ground that this pleasingness evokes the curiosity and engagement that leads to potentially fruitful dialogue. 'There are all sorts of issues that start to rise up. Like: are you aestheticizing the destruction of the planet?' he said. 'Well, that's not how I'm looking at it. But maybe. I'm really trying to find a visual language that has a painterly or surreal quality to it that shows the world we've evolved in a way that makes people engage with it, versus saying: 'That's just a banal picture of something that I'm not interested in.'' Burtynsky is clear about the fact that his images are meant to be not didactic but enigmatic, entry points and not endpoints. Although it is difficult to look at shots such as a wasteland full of discarded tires or a mountainside honeycombed by extractive mining without feeling a gut reaction of shame and eco-anxiety, his photographs are much more than just environmentalist agitprop. The artist takes pride in the many interpretations that his works can hold. 'My photographs are like Rorschach tests,' he said. 'It's like the teacher puts a picture in front of the class and it's like: what did you see? If they see environmental degradation, they see something out of the history of art. If they see something, like, technologically kind of advanced, or some curious way in which we do things as humans, each one of them is a legitimate reading of what they're seeing – the individual completes it. When people tell me about what they see in an image, I get to learn more about them than they probably learn about me.' In addition to delivering some of Burtynsky's most career-defining works, The Great Acceleration also shows lesser-known sides of the photographer – there are two pieces from his student days, a shot from a rarely seen series that he made exploring masculinity via taxidermy workshops, and never-before-shown portraits of individual workers who toil within the built landscapes that he specializes in. 'I would walk through these landscapes with my 2 1/4 camera, and every once in a while I'd see a person and say: 'Can I take your photograph?' It was always an acknowledgement of the sitter in their space, and just another way of showing that these are things that humans are doing,' he said. Burtynsky hopes that shows like The Great Acceleration offer a way to let a wider audience see what is happening in the world. He remains doubtful of art's ability to directly transform how governments and industry use our resources, but he does believe in the value of raising awareness and sparking curiosity. 'Artists are soft power, we're storytellers, we don't have the ability to influence or shape policy. What we can do is raise consciousness, absorb our experience of the world and move it through the medium of our choice. I'm trying to be a kind of conduit into what is happening.' Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration is on show at the International Center of Photography in New York until 28 September
Fast Company
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Fast Company
Humans have irreversibly changed the planet. These photos prove it
On the second and third floors of New York City's International Center of Photography (ICP), a collection of over 40 years worth of Edward Burtnysky 's vision of industrial, human impact on the planet will be displayed throughout the summer. It's Burtnysky's first solo, NYC institutional exhibition show in over 20 years, and is more or less—an ode to his life's work. From some of his earliest work in the 80s as a student on the upper level, to his newer, larger scaled work on the lower, each piece represents the development of human industry through a 'concerned photography' lens. 'All the work kind of pokes around into those zones of globalism and as well as the need for materials, and looking at our population growth,' Burtynysky says. 'I was born in 1955 when the world population was under 3 billion people and now we're over 8 billion. I kind of knew then that we were talking about a human population explosion.' While studying photography in 1981, Burtynsky was working in 'big industry' to put himself through school. There, he said he decided to focus on big industries like oil and cobalt mining, and define them through photography. Regardless of place or subject, he says he wanted to focus on one continuous idea— our impact on the world. The works range in location and anthropogenic effect. From large, aerial views of chain restaurants and gas companies on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to up-close portraits of recycling workers in China, Burtynsky's work is meant to feel human and appear visually cinematic. According to David Campany, ICP's creative director and curator of the show, these photos are not the kind meant to be viewed on a smartphone. 'I think when you go to the cinema, you're part of a slightly more collective consciousness, and I think it's the same when people stand and look at big images,' Campany says. The larger scale allows the viewer to get lost in the details within the bigger picture, like being able to look at dusty orange landscapes with sleek lines—but backing up and realizing it's a commercial road in the middle of the desert. The show brings together around 70 images of Burtynsky's work, and create a 'survey of the last 45 years' of environmental impact. In turn, it makes people look closely at the negative human effect and how each image is interconnected to the larger idea. 'You might look at that picture of a mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo in Central Africa and think that's got nothing to do with me, but 70% of the world's cobalt currently comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo,' Campany says. 'And when you put your hand in your pocket [and feel for your smartphone ], you've suddenly got a very intimate connection with that image on the wall.' Although there's no specific method or direction to view or engage with the work, each piece is generally meant to hold 'equal value' when it comes to lighting and subject matter importance. Burtynsky refers to this as the 'democratic distribution of light and space.' For him, it allows the viewer to 'fall into the surface' of the image itself. 'In 1981, which was my student work, I was looking at our relationship with nature containing nature, controlling nature, greenhouses,and large industrial farms,' Burtynsky says. 'Even back then, I realized farming was our biggest impact in the planet, and it's kind of makes sense to have a farming as a central image for the exhibition.' Despite the works spanning decades of his travels and anthropogenic view, they are all embedded with what he says is a sense of aesthetic, wonder, and impact. 'Shipbreaking work was some of the most incredible locations I've ever photographed and experienced,' Burtynsky says. 'It still stands as one of the most crazy experiences of my life. The pictures that came out of that were sort of wild, and [the one you see when] you come out of the elevator where you see all the men—it's like being greeted by the other world that deals with our shit.' In addition to Burtynsky's show, ICP is also showing Panjereh, meaning 'window' in Farsi, from Iranian-American artist Sheida Soleimani. The exhibition emphasizes her Ghostwriter series, where she 'explores her parents' experiences of political exile and migration' through layered, magically surreal pieces. Both exhibits can be viewed simultaneously at the ICP. from June 19 until September 28.
