Anthropocene
Burtynsky, Baichwal, de Pencier
Published on 12. December 2023
Book
Hardback
256 pages
978-1-77310-097-5 (ISBN)
Description
Winner, Canadian Museum Association Award for Research in ArtA controversial idea currently under vigorous and passionate international debate that would recognize the "human signature" on the planet.Anthropocene is the latest book by Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal, and Nicholas de Pencier to chronicle the massive and irreversible impact of humans on the Earth -- on a geological scale.In photographs that are both stunning and disconcerting, Burtynsky, Baichwal, and de Pencier document species extinction (the burning of elephant tusks to disrupt the illegal trade of ivory), technofossils (swathes of discarded plastic forming geological layers), and terraforming (mines and industrial agriculture).The book also features a range of essays by artists, curators, and scientists, some part of an international group of scientists who have proposed that the Earth is now entering a new era of geological time where human activity is the driving force behind environmental and geological change -- i.e. the Anthropocene. Thus the book brings contemporary art into conversation with environmental science and anthropology on a topic that urgently affects all of us.Anthropocene was published to coincide with a major international exhibition that opened simultaneously in September 2018 at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada and the release of a film on the same topic by Baichwal and de Pencier.
Reviews / Votes
"Anthropocene: The Human Epoch delivers a powerful warning of a world in decline. A movie thousands of years in the making, Anthropocene: The Human Epoch takes cameras to where our consumptive need has most alarmingly re-engineered the planet. Its also, in many ways, a document of a spiritual/environmental undoing. Filming across a dozen countries, Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky continue the visual breadth of their previously observed warning shots about the scope of progress (Manufactured Landscapes, Watermark) with a reflective tour of excavation, industry and decimation that argues weve already moved into a new geological epoch owned entirely by us. Dotted with alarming facts delivered in gravely intoned voice-over by Alicia Vikander, Anthropocene finds the terrible awe in town-destroying terraforming projects in Germany worked by earthmovers of Mad Max-like magnitude, the sweeping wretchedness of a city-sized African landfill scavenged by thousands of the poor working alongside sickly looking pelicans, and what the acid-caused bleaching of coral reefs looks like via time lapse photography. Artfully composed verite meant to confound and disturb as it gives eye-in-the-sky views of belching factories, hacked forests and vast lithium-extraction ponds while occasionally crashing to earth for a brief testimonial from an affected human, the film isnt the most cohesive look at startling global transformation. Its strongest, however, as a dizzying, dimensional tour of scale and time, forcing us to wonder how a sense of earth-centric balance can be restored." - LA Times Sept 25 2019More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Fredricton
Canada
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 171 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
902 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-77310-097-5 (9781773100975)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Sophie Hackett is a curator of Photography at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Andrea Kunard taught for over a decade at Carleton University, Queen's University and Nova Scotia College of Art & Design University. As associate curator at the National Gallery of Canada, Kunard explores the intersections of contemporary and historical issues in Canadian photography, focusing on cultural uses of the medium, and its capacity to challenge and reconfigure accepted understandings of the public and private, subjectivity, memory, and knowledge. She has curated numerous exhibition for the National Gallery and Library and Archives Canada. Kunard is the co-editor of The Cultural Work of Photography in Canada. She has also written articles on contemporary and historical photography in The Journal of Canadian Art History, the International Journal of Canadian Studies, and Early Popular Visual Culture. Urs Stahel is the director, curator, and editor of Fotomuseum Winterthur.