A Canadian photographer’s global warning
I had an opportunity to attend the opening ceremony of Extraction / Abstraction, a major photography exhibition by renowned Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, held at the Seoul Museum of History on Dec. 12.
Organized to commemorate the Korea-Canada Year of Cultural Exchange, the exhibition was supported by the Embassy of Canada in Korea and the Seoul Museum of History.
This large-scale retrospective brings together more than four decades of Burtynsky’s work, offering a powerful visual record of how human activity — driven by industrialization and economic ambition — has transformed the natural environment. Known internationally for his large-format images of human-altered landscapes, Burtynsky works across both traditional film and advanced digital techniques. His photographs confront an uncomfortable paradox: The marks of industry can appear visually beautiful, even sublime, while simultaneously revealing profound environmental damage. Viewers are drawn in by aesthetic appeal, only to be left questioning the true cost of progress.
The exhibition title, Extraction / Abstraction, may initially sound conceptually dense, but its meaning becomes clear as one moves from image to image. Burtynsky documents sites of extraction — mines, factories, landfills, agricultural zones — and transforms them into compositions that resemble abstract paintings. In doing so, he invites viewers to recognize how deeply human intervention has reshaped the Earth, often in ways unnoticed in daily life.
Spanning the globe, the exhibition moves from Nairobi’s Dandora landfill and tire dumps in North America to deforested regions of Borneo and the terraced rice paddies of western China, revealing the varied faces of industrialization across borders. Some photographs are taken from the air, others from the ground, yet all share a haunting sense of abstraction.
One striking example is the jade-like waves of the Þjórsá River in southern Iceland, shimmering with petal-like colors. This surreal beauty, however, is the result of volcanic soil carried by glacial water and further altered by nearby power plants—a visual record of environmental intervention. Equally arresting is the shipbreaking series from Chittagong, Bangladesh, where massive vessels are dismantled by workers lacking basic safety equipment. The images are visually stunning yet deeply unsettling, evoking a sense of foreboding.
Other works point toward a future shaped by mechanization. A BMW assembly plant in South Africa, devoid of visible workers, presents an efficient yet eerily impersonal vision of automation. Burtynsky also documents industrial expansion in China, mining-related environmental degradation in Ethiopia and the oil fields of Azerbaijan, where one black-and-white image of the SOCAR oil field reflected on water is both beautiful and disturbing.
There is no denying that industrialization has brought material prosperity and comfort. Yet Burtynsky’s work forces a fundamental question: If extraction and consumption continue at this pace, what kind of future awaits our planet?
As Burtynsky himself has said, “We come from nature … If we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves.” Standing before these photographic works, it becomes clear that the landscapes he depicts — however distant they may seem — are not someone else’s problem. They are, in fact, our own.
Shin Hye-suk (sinesu@naver.com), who also goes by Shindy, completed a doctorate in sociology and has devoted two decades of her life to academic pursuits at a university in Japan. She is also a florist and currently serves as an adviser to the Seoul JoongAng Rotary Club International, Korea.