Edward Burtynsky's monumental chronicle of the human impact on the planet(newyorker.com)
newyorker.com
Edward Burtynsky's monumental chronicle of the human impact on the planet
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/earths-poet-of-scale
17 comments
There's a fantastic documentary about Burtynsky's work, Manufactured Landscapes. I highly recommend it, even if you just watch the opening. https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/films/manufactured-...
It's actually the first in what became a series!
Watermark [0] and The Anthropocene[1] are both phenomenal. In fact, in terms of cinematography, I think Watermark is the best. Manufactured Landscapes was absolutely earth-shattering in my own consideration of humans and our ecologies though.
If you find yourself liking Burtynsky may I also suggest checking out Richard Misrach and the classic book of Manfred Hamm photography, Dead Tech [2].
(We'd be remiss to leave out the contributions of Jennifer Baichwal to all three films and Nicholas de Pencier on The Anthropocene.)
[0] https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/films/watermark
[1] https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/films/anthropocene-...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Tech-Guide-Archaeology-Tomorrow/... (Only linked to Amazon because people have posted images)
Watermark [0] and The Anthropocene[1] are both phenomenal. In fact, in terms of cinematography, I think Watermark is the best. Manufactured Landscapes was absolutely earth-shattering in my own consideration of humans and our ecologies though.
If you find yourself liking Burtynsky may I also suggest checking out Richard Misrach and the classic book of Manfred Hamm photography, Dead Tech [2].
(We'd be remiss to leave out the contributions of Jennifer Baichwal to all three films and Nicholas de Pencier on The Anthropocene.)
[0] https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/films/watermark
[1] https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/films/anthropocene-...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Tech-Guide-Archaeology-Tomorrow/... (Only linked to Amazon because people have posted images)
Wow, thanks for telling me! I watched Manufactured Landscapes back before the other two had come out and hadn't heard about the rest of the trilogy.
Burtynsky's environmental trilogy is worth exploring in full: Manufactured Landscapes (2006), Watermark (2013), and Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (2018).
All three available to stream on Prime Video
The whole movie is available on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/ManufacturedLandscapes_201902
Link to the show at the International Center of Photography (NYC): https://www.icp.org/exhibitions/edward-burtynsky-great-accel...
Petapixel article with more photos and commentary: https://petapixel.com/2025/06/24/photographer-edward-burtyns...
Petapixel article with more photos and commentary: https://petapixel.com/2025/06/24/photographer-edward-burtyns...
I just finished reading “The Sixth Extinction” and it’s hard not to just feel sadness at many of these pictures. The economic benefits of this rapid human development are undeniable but the impact on earth as a whole is pretty horrifying.
That book put me in a really bad place for more than a year. It was so depressing, i just couldnt shake the inevitablity of it all.
The fascist take over of the US has been a quaint distraction, but in the end it also means nothing compared to the collapse of the food chain. You cant eat dollars.
The fascist take over of the US has been a quaint distraction, but in the end it also means nothing compared to the collapse of the food chain. You cant eat dollars.
Yeah, the dissonance of day to day stresses and societal issues with mass extinction is hard to deal with. I’m currently putting together a pile of a few books that claim to have pragmatic but optimistic/hopeful views of where we go from here.
Any good suggestions so far? The best I read was Not The End of The World by Hannah Ritchie from Our World in Data.
Thanks for the suggestion. Two I’ve already read that I thought were decent were Bill Gate’s “How to avoid a climate disaster” and Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Ministry for the Future”. I have Drawdown next on my list.
Scarcely different than the world shown in WALL-E or idiocracy
[deleted]
The first picture must be these windmills that ruin the landscape. /s