Humans are impacting the earth more than all other natural forces combined. In a new multidisciplinary body of work called The Anthropocene Project, famed photographer and filmmaker Edward Burtynsky investigates our outsized influence on the fate of the planet. We asked him about it.
INTERVIEW: Mark Mann
PHOTOS: Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto
Lagos, Nigeria
2016
What is the anthropocene?
It’s the cumulative effect of 7.5 billion people. It’s the combination of deforestation, transportation, heating systems, air conditioning systems, and everything else we do that is now impacting the planet as a whole. Today our CO2 is more than 400 parts per million, and we haven’t seen that in 800 thousand years of records.
How do you visualize the anthropocene?
We can’t show the CO2 in the air, but we can show the large industrial refineries that are taking crude oil and flipping it into gasoline, diesel, plastic, and all the other things we use. We look at deforestation, urban expansion, industrial expansion, infrastructure projects, tunnels, mines. And we can show all those, because they’re visual.
What does the concept of the anthropocene bring to the conversation about climate change?
It becomes scientific, evidence-based, and more conclusive. There still can be deniers, but most people have landed on the side with scientists and geologists. If there’s still any doubt, it should be eliminated by the scientific rigor and process of determining the signals that are telling us the planet is now tipping to another state.
Oil Bunkering #1,
Niger Delta,
Nigeria 2016
Phosphor Tailings Pond #4,
Near Lakeland, Florida,
USA 2012
Clearcut #1, Palm Oil
Plantation, Borneo,
Malaysia 2016
What is the lesson that viewers can take away from your work?
It’s reconnecting us to the fact that we live in a very small circuit and we see the world from a contained perspective. In aggregate, the work shows that there’s a huge world out there, and we’re part of it. The systems we’ve engaged for the extraction of nature is changing the world profoundly, and technology is driving that change. We leave wastelands, but they are landscapes that we’ve created. These surreal, otherworldly places are our places.
So you’re ripping open the black box of where our stuff comes from.
One of the responses is that people say, These are disaster sites. I say, No they’re not. This is what our species currently has to do to provide for ourselves at this scale. We could do it differently, but we’re still going to have to go to nature. The question is whether we can get our shit together fast enough to not destroy the life systems that are underpinning our life.
Where do you find hope?
The anthropocene does not have to be a dark chapter. We can find our way out of it and have a positive anthropocene. Photovoltaic is now cheaper than coal and it’s almost cheaper than natural gas. I see big things like that, which no government can get in the way of. The transition could happen more quickly if we stopped subsidizing fossil fuels. There are signals that things can change, but it’s a question of whether people have the will and desire for that change. The consequences are very fearsome if they don’t, and the next generations will pay the price.
Log Booms #1, Vancouver
Island, British Columbia,
Canada 2016
Dandora Landfill #3,
Plastics Recycling, Nairobi,
Kenya 2016
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The Anthropocene Project explores human-caused planetary transformation across multiple media. The documentary ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch made its world premiere at TIFF 2018 in September. The first Anthropocene museum shows run concurrently at the Art Gallery of Ontario (09/28/2018-01/06/2019) and the National Gallery of Canada (09/28/2018-02/24/2019). Visit theanthropocene.org to see interactive content, 360 films, and 3D models of remote locations around the world.
