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Award-winning Canadian environmental
photographer Edward Burtynksy, who challenges us to reflect on
the material manifestations of often devastating human interventions
in the natural landscape, will exhibit his powerfully alluring
images at The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus
College in Edward Burtynsky: Min(d)ing the Landscape.
The Berman Museum of Art will host two public programs in conjunction
with this exhibition of works from Burtynsky’s “Breaking
Ground,” “Quarries,” “Urban Mines,”
“Oil,” “Ships,” and “Australia”
photographic series, as two scholars lend their expertise to providing
cross-disciplinary context for the exhibition.
Petra Tschakert, assistant professor of geography, Pennsylvania
State University, will present a lecture March 30, at 4:30 p.m.
in the Main Gallery. Her research focuses broadly on human-environment
interactions and more specifically on environmental change, development,
sustainability, knowledge, inequality and marginalization.
Christina Miller, assistant professor of art, Millersville University,
and founding member of the non-profit artists collective Ethical
Metalsmiths, will discuss contemporary artistic interventions
and the adaptive re-use of materials to create works of art, April
8, at 4:30 p.m., in the Main Gallery.
Burtynksy’s biography notes that his imagery explores the
intricate link between industry and nature, combining the raw
elements of mining, quarrying, manufacturing, shipping, oil production
and recycling into eloquent, highly expressive visions that find
beauty and humanity in the most unlikely of places. Burtynsky
himself writes that “[t]hese images are meant as metaphors
[for] the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue
between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn
by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or
unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success.
Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption
and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy
contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools
of our times.”
Burtynsky’s photographs are included in collections of
museums such as the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of
Modern Art New York, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
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