Edward Burtynsky

“I can go into the wilderness and not see anyone for days and experience a kind of space that hasn't changed for tens of thousands of years. Having that experience was necessary to my perception of how photography can look at the changes humanity has brought about in the landscape. My work does become a kind of lament.”

“I wish my artwork could persuade millions of people to join a global conversation about sustainability.”

“One thing that's consistent in all of my work is that these aren't accidents; they're all conscious landscapes. They're all things that we're doing and that we have done through our legal and social systems and structures of capitalism.”

“I'm trying to photograph an old offshore oil city that is lying in decay in the Caspian Sea, but I've been having a hard time getting there.”

“All of my work comes out of a deep concern for human expansion into the landscape.”

“These landscapes aren't breaking news or necessarily even illegal. These are intentional, purposeful landscapes, whether to extend our cities or build a mine or put a road in or clear a forest. I've been photographing that which has been intended by us; it's not an accident.”

“I wish I could create an IMAX film that would make my work accessible to a broader audience.”

“No water equals no life. We can have no oil; it's fine. No water - there is no plan b with no water.”

“If you look at photojournalism, it's largely driven by current events... always chasing a crisis or disaster. I follow a narrative that is much looser than current events.”

“Humans can really reveal themselves through what they choose to see as the most important or meaningful detail in an image.”

“In film, you can create the illusion of time and space. People speak; characters reveal their feelings. You can use music, which informs how you should be feeling, and it carries you to the right emotional space.”

“My father was an amateur oil painter, so some of his oil paintings were on our walls. There was one above the piano of a famous Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko, playing an instrument known as a bandura. I remember that one kind of resonated with me; it was always central in the living room.”

“In our ephemeral information age, people think we've left behind the stone, bronze, and iron ages. But they're all still going on - we use tonnes of this stuff every day. You just have to look.”

“Digital photography and Photoshop have made it very easy for people to take pictures. It's a medium that allows a lot of mediocre stuff to get through.”

“When I look at green trees on a sunny day, I don't know how to make an interesting picture of that.”

“Like all animals, human beings have always taken what they want from nature. But we are the rogue species. We are unique in our ability to use resources on a scale and at a speed that our fellow species can't.”

“To me, Los Angeles was the invention of the suburb. They figured it out and perfected it and created a city that was dependent on the automobile.”

“The bigger question is how does a rogue species called humans - whose population just blew through the seven billion mark on it's way to nine billion members - manage to survive the next century on a planet with finite resources, without destroying its delicate balance in the process.”

“I wish we could launch a ground-breaking competition that motivates kids to invent new ideas in sustainable living.”

“Sometimes you don't know why you're doing something. You're intuitively following, to see where it leads.”