The Great Acceleration, the first solo institutional exhibition of world renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky’s work in New York City in over twenty years, reveals the depth of Burtynsky's investigation into the human alteration of natural landscapes around the world, showing their present fragility and enduring beauty in equal measure.
Curated by David Campany, Creative Director at ICP, this retrospective exhibition will present over seventy photographs, including many of Burtynsky’s landmark images, some of which have never previously been shown, along with three ultra high-resolution murals. The exhibition will also include a visual and narrative timeline of Burtynsky’s creative life. Intentionally scheduled to extend through Climate Week NYC in September 2025, The Great Acceleration will serve not only as an urgent call for action, but will also give visitors the opportunity to appreciate the sublimity that remains in the landscape, while also deepening our understanding of the challenges that confront us today. In this way, The Great Acceleration upholds ICP’s long-standing and core commitment to present concerned photography that can inspire new audiences.
"The Great Acceleration" is an established term used to describe the rapid rise of human impact on our planet according to a range of measures, among them population growth, water usage, transportation, greenhouse gas emissions, resource extraction and food production, each of which Burtynsky has photographed the outward signs of at length and in great detail over the past forty years. From open pit mines across North America to oil derricks in Azerbaijan, from rice terraces in China to oil bunkering in Nigeria, Burtynsky has travelled across the world and back again as part of his restless and seemingly inexhaustible drive to discover the ways, both old and new, that organized human activity has transformed the natural world. Though already unified by both the precision and formal beauty that Burtynsky deploys to create each photograph, The Great Acceleration further underscores that, like their respective subjects, each project remains fundamentally interconnected.
