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“Nature Transformed” takes as its starting point a remarkable series of photographs by the pioneering, internationally celebrated artist Edward Burtynsky. His now signature pursuit of conceptual subjects—from oil extraction in the United States and in Azerbaijan to shipbreaking in Bangladesh—started in 1991, just fifty miles north of the Hood Museum of Art, in the granite quarries of Barre, Vt.
Edward Burtynsky’s “Rock of Ages #7” is one of the photographs featured in “Nature Transformed.” (Courtesy of Howard Greenberg & Bryce Wolkowitz, New York / Nicholas Metivier, Toronto)
The exhibition considers a selection of Burtynsky’s monumental photographs—seven of which Burtynsky is showing at the Hood for the first time, including two he took in the little-known but extensive underground quarries in Danby, Vt.—within the context of Vermont’s social and cultural history, as well as the much longer history of the geological formation of northern New England and its marble and granite deposits.
Burtynsky is one of Canada’s most respected photographers. His photographic depictions of global industrial landscapes are included in the collections of over 50 major museums around the world, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Michael Taylor, director of the Hood Museum of Art, says that “Burtynsky’s powerful artistic vision of the interaction between humans and the environment is the guiding force behind the exhibition’s conception.”
“Nature Transformed” is on view through August 19. Burtynsky will deliver a public lecture at the museum on Friday, May 11, at 5:30 p.m.
