Toronto-based photographer Edward Burtynsky was honoured last night at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art where he receives the $20,000 MOCCA Award for Contemporary Art 2011. Presented biennially and sponsored by BMO Financial Group, the MOCCA Award was established in 2007 to honour a Canadian active in the field for innovation, accomplishment, contribution over time, or for a specific project, that has national or international significance.
In recognition of the prize, Burtynsky and his Toronto dealer, Nicholas Metivier, have mounted a lightning-strike show – open to the public this Saturday and Sunday only — featuring a small retrospective of the artist’s provocative “manufactured landscapes” and the first-ever showing of work shot last summer in Spain’s Monegros region.
The dryland farming images debuted in the New York Times Magazine this past Sunday where a striking, single image recalled the work of French abstract painter Jean Dubuffet. Burtynsky, who walked me through the show Wednesday morning (he’s seen above doing an interview with BravoTV), says he sees other artistic references in the aerial photos including suggestions of North American Aboriginal art.
Abstract Impression by Edward Burtynsky courtesy of Nicholas Metivier Gallery, originally published in the New York Times Magazine
The photographer’s riveting pictures of the Belchite Steppes will ultimately become part of a “meditation on water,” similar to his astonishing exploration of oil, currently showing at the Royal Ontario Museum’s Institute for Contemporary Culture.
Burtynsky’s “intentional landscapes” have earned him an international reputation. In 2005, he shared the inaugural TED Prize ($100,000 each) with U2’s Bono and medical inventor Robert Fischell [the TED website features a fascinating self-narrated tour of Burtynsky's work].
The photographer turns uncharacteristically shy when I bring up the prizes but he allows that such honours “provide the opportunity for culture to show itself to the community,” which is exactly what’s happening this weekend at MOCCA.
Still on the subject of awards, Burtynsky has teamed up with Jane Nokes (Director of the Fine Art Collection and Corporate Archives at Scotiabank Group) to create the Scotiabank Photography Award, a $50,000 cash prize awarded to a mid-to-late career artist, a highlight of Toronto’s annual Contact Photography Festival. Shortlisted for the inaugural prize — to be given out May 18 — are Roy Arden, Lynne Cohen and Robin Collyer.
Seeing large-scale prints of Burtynsky’s work is to instantly understand what all the fuss is about. The photographer travels the globe shooting landscapes that have been transformed by mankind, occasionally for the better but most often for the worse. His searing images of oil spills, tailing ponds, quarries and refineries have earned the photographer a reputation as an environmentalist but it’s not a label he’d ever put on himself.
“I’m reticent to point out right and wrong,” he says. “If someone was to ask me, ‘What’s the solution?’ I’d say, ‘Fewer people.’ We’re a rogue species, there are too many of us and our resources are being strained. I don’t think it’s a left or right issue.”
“People can criticize mining and its effects on the planet,” he continues, “but every day we engage with the fruits of that endeavour with our iPhones, our cars — just try and not participate in this oil culture. It’s not a simple right or wrong and the role of the artist has more to do with raising consciousness and bringing ideas to bear, being the starting point for a conversation versus coming up with a solution. I’m not a scientist, I’m not a politician, I don’t carry that kind of power or authority.
“If I’m trying to get in somewhere to take photographs and a CEO asks me about my political stripes I say, ‘I’m an advocate for sustainability and I hope you are, too.’ ”
Burtynsky says having children – he has two daughters, ages 13 and 16 — really shifted his own perspective. “Now, I think about them and their children and what kind of legacy we’re leaving to future generations.”
WHERE/WHEN: Edward Burtynsky, A Survey at MOCCA (952 Queen Street West, 416.395.0067), April 16 and 17, 11 am – 6 pm; Pay What You Can. Edward Burtynsky Oil at the Royal Ontario Museum (100 Queen’s Park, 416.586.8000) until July 3, 10 am – 5:30 pm (Fridays until 8:30 pm); $16 – $24.
Photos by Christopher Jones
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