Edward Burtynsky thinks big. Since the 1980s, he has been making large-format images of the extraction and exploitation of natural resources and the impact of these vast operations on the environment. His latest project is his most ambitious to date. In two exhibitions on view now at the National Gallery of Canada in Toronto and the Art Gallery of Ontario, a new book being published by Steidl, and two gallery shows opening in New York City in November, Burtynsky invites viewers to consider the subject of geological time. The title of the project, “Anthropocene,” comes from the name used to describe what, after extensive research, some scientists argue is a new geological epoch, in which dramatic changes to the Earth have been created not by a giant meteor, but by human activity.

“It’s an unprecedented planetary period,” Burtynsky explains. Five years ago, he learned about the subjects that international scientists in the Working Group on the Anthropocene have examined—phenomena such as extinctions, changes to the soil, technological waste—and decided “to try to work in concert with scientific discipline” and gather “visual evidence to make the case that we’ve entered a new epoch.” His goal, he says, was to present the impact of human activity on the Earth in a way that is “revelatory rather than accusatory.” As he puts it, “There’s enough blame to go around.”

In addition to making photos, he also worked with filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier on films and augmented reality (AR) installations. They used a variety of technologies and media to find the most compelling and engaging ways to present the still and moving images they gathered.  “So I have a range of things in my toolkit,” Burtynsky says. “It makes going on a shoot very interesting.”

For the twin museum exhibitions, Burtynsky created several high-resolution 10 x 20-foot murals, each made by using software that stitched together numerous images he shot at a single location. “I did one that was 260 images. The biggest print file was 32 gigabytes,” he says. Some, like the aerial views of the megacity of Lagos, Nigeria, and a marble quarry in Carrera, Italy, capture the impact of human civilizations. Others, such as his mural of a redwood forest in British Columbia, take viewers to what remains of untouched wilderness. Burtynsky, a master printer as well as a photographer, says the murals are an extension of his longtime interest in creating a “dynamic experience” for viewers. He noticed, for example, that when he’s displayed 60 x 80-inch prints of massive industrial sites or oil fields, a viewer “can stand back and take it in, or you can walk up and put your face up to it to see the truck that belies the scale of it.” He adds, “You can feel like you’re falling into that place.” The murals, he says, “take that idea even further: You can still put your face inches from it and it doesn’t break down, even though it’s a 10 x 20 foot print.”

“Coal Mine #1, North Rhine, Westphalia, Germany 2015” from “Anthropocene,” a new series by Edward Burtynsky, now on view at two museums simultaneously. © Edward Burtynsky/Courtesy Howard Greenberg and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York; Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto.

He made the murals using sophisticated software that allowed him to set the dimensions of the area that he wanted to photograph, then “it starts to map the whole image as a series of stills.” He then ported the images to stitching software which composited the images. As in his previous projects, Burtynsky had to find the right vantage point that would allow him to capture the scale of his subjects. In the past, he’s used elevated tripods, cherry pickers and helicopters. In working on “Anthropocene,” he sometimes used drones. “I can put my Hassie on a tripod and shoot it on the ground, and then take [the camera] up on a drone, lock it in space and then map a series of images,” Burtynsky explains.

To increase viewer engagement in the murals, Baichwal and de Pencier created film extensions, so viewers can hold their phones to spots in the image and learn more about the place depicted. Even more ambitiously, Burtynsky and his team made three augmented reality installations for the show, using thousands of images to allow viewers to explore a place or a subject—such as a coral reef—in three dimensions.

In 2016, when Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta announced the government would burn piles of confiscated ivory tusks, Burtynsky decided to photograph the largest of the piles, which was made up of tusks from large bull elephants—of which few remain in Africa. “They’ve been relentlessly pursued for ivory,” he says, adding, “when the biggest and strongest males are gone, that strain of genetics is gone.” Burtynsky wanted to shoot the tower of tusks in three dimensions. He had two hours to set up rigs he needed to elevate his cameras to different heights and capture every inch of the pyre from all angles. “The next day it was burnt to a pile of ashes,” he recalls. At the National Gallery of Ontario, “with an iPad, you’re going to be able to walk around that pyre at scale and experience it in three dimensions,” he says. “There’s no way a still, no matter how beautifully I make it, is going to have the same impact as the experience of walking around” the subject.

Burtynsky will bring some of the AR installations to his show at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in New York City, where he will also show large-scale prints. At the same time, the Howard Greenberg Gallery, which has smaller walls, will show different images in more modest sizes.

Burtynsky, Baichwal and de Pencier had originally planned to create virtual reality (VR) experiences for the museum shows. “We had a lot of VR assets,” Burtynsky explains, “but we couldn’t find a way that it could be delivered without it becoming a juggernaut.” They realized the technology was too cumbersome for the crowds at a museum: They would need VR goggles, staff or docents to explain to viewers how to use the VR goggles, and then clean them for the next viewer. They tried to find a way to make viewing the VR “a shared experience” for multiple museum goers, he says. “Then a year ago we threw up our hands and concentrated on AR.”

He hopes that curiosity about the novel experiences presented via AR will lure young people to the show. “My gut says that augmented reality—and what artists are going to start doing with it—is a very exciting new area,” he says. Making a photograph that can surprise and engage people is challenging, he says, “because we’re so inundated” with images. “To make a photograph that makes someone say, ‘Wow, this is worth going to a museum to see,’ that’s what I’m trying to get at. That’s what inspires me as a photographer.”

But the exhibitions offer more than just technological thrills. Burtynsky says they considered how to make the show “not overwhelming,” so people have time to contemplate each of the works on display. They planned the number and spacing of the works to make each object in the show “something special and worth spending some time with and understanding. That’s our ambition,” Burtynsky says. Rather than making something “didactic and polemical,” he says, he avoided simple prescriptions for, say, energy conservation. “What is more interesting for us is a general elevation of consciousness that there is a world that’s unfolding and you have to be aware of it, and of the consequences that we’re having on diversity and habitat.” He adds, “I think this is  where artists and filmmakers can make a difference. We can make the content that begins the dialogue.”

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