Edward Burtynsky Quotes

#1. 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.

Edward Burtynsky

#2. 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.

Edward Burtynsky

#3. 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.

Edward Burtynsky

#4. Somebody referred to what I do as subliminal activism, which I like.

Edward Burtynsky

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

Edward Burtynsky

#6. I'm working in this very complex set of issues having to do with who we are as a species and how much we can do to the Earth before it starts to buckle under. My work can easily read as an indictment, but I don't see it as that simple a problem.

Edward Burtynsky

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

Edward Burtynsky

#8. I think the environmental movement has failed in that it's used the stick too much; it's used the apocalyptic tone too much; it hasn't sold the positive aspects of being environmentally concerned and trying to pull us out.

Edward Burtynsky

#9. 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.

Edward Burtynsky

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

Edward Burtynsky

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

Edward Burtynsky

#12. I had to work to put myself through school, so I always worked in the heaviest industries I could find because that's who paid the best.

Edward Burtynsky