Review of Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal, and Nicholas De Pencier\u27s Anthropocen

Shaw, David

English

Scholars Commons

The Goose
Volume 17 | No. 2 Article 12
6-12-2019
Anthropocene by Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer
Baichwal, and Nicholas De Pencier
David Shaw
Concordia University
Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons
Follow this and additional works at / Suivez-nous ainsi que d’autres travaux et œuvres:
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose
This article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Goose by an
authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.
Cet article vous est accessible gratuitement et en libre accès grâce à Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Le texte a été approuvé pour faire partie intégrante
de la revue The Goose par un rédacteur autorisé de Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Pour de plus amples informations, contactez
scholarscommons@wlu.ca.
Recommended Citation / Citation recommandée
Shaw, David. "Anthropocene by Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal, and Nicholas De Pencier." The Goose, vol. 17 , no. 2 , article 12,
2019,
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol17/iss2/12.
  
Anthropocene by EDWARD BURTYNSKY, 
JENNIFER BAICHWAL, and NICHOLAS DE 
PENCIER 
AGO Goose Lane, 2018. $35.00 
 
Reviewed by DAVID SHAW 
 
Anthropocene is the textual counterpart 
to Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal, 
and Nicholas De Pencier’s series of 
photographic exhibitions, films, and 
virtual and augmented reality installations 
that make up their massively ambitious 
“Anthropocene Project.” While 
Anthropocene aims to be both a 
methodological account of their 
collaborative process throughout the 
project and a more portable reproduction 
of some of their collective’s photographic 
works, the book is at its most effective as 
an artifact of the dense and potentially 
irresolvable tensions that are inherent in 
the concept of the “Anthropocene” itself. 
Hubristic yet humbling, planetarily vast 
yet still deeply personal, Anthropocene 
emerges as a document of the challenges 
that face anyone who aims to represent 
back to humans the damage that 
humanity has inflicted on the planet. 
 The Anthropocene names the 
proposed epoch during which human 
activity has become a major force on the 
earth’s geological and environmental 
systems. Since it was coined in the early 
2000s by atmospheric chemist Paul 
Crutzen and ecologist Eugene Stoermer, 
the term has served as a catalyst for a 
wide range of academic and artistic 
interventions, each seeking to grapple in 
their own way with humanity’s newfound 
role as a geological force, as well as 
challenge the concept of the 
Anthropocene itself. As Baichwal asks in 
her brief reflection on her and her 
collaborators’ work in Anthropocene, 
“[h]ow do we convey, despite our brevity 
as a species, the magnitude of our 
impact?” (202). The problem of scale is 
clearly one of the central undertakings of 
Burtynsky, Baichwal, and De Pencier’s 
work: photographic series such as 
Burtynsky’s “Dandora Landfill,” which 
examines one of Nairobi’s largest 
dumping sites of industrial, agricultural, 
and medical waste, render the impacts of 
human activity in grim detail. Plastic 
bottles bearing familiar branded labels are 
assembled into surreal landscapes of 
waste, capturing the aggregate effect of 
individuated human actors on a massive 
scale. 
 The inherent tensions built into the 
concept of the Anthropocene also 
produce some interestingly contradictory 
moments within the text. For example, De 
Pencier characterizes the shifting 
relationship between humans and 
technology by attempting to distance 
himself from his grandparents’ 
generation, which, he notes, “presided 
over the ‘Great Acceleration’ after the 
Second World War, which scientists of the 
Anthropocene Working Group are touting 
as the definitive start to the human 
epoch” (205). As De Pencier goes on to 
describe, a central driver of his 
grandparents’ generational culpability is 
the result of a kind of utopian 
technological determinism, wherein 
“human technological progress was 
inherently positive, [and] a natural 
extension of the innate impulse to expand 
to fill the carrying capacity of the 
environment around you” (205). In 
contradistinction to this deterministic and 
vaguely colonial impulse toward 
expansion, the present moment, argues 
De Pencier, is characterized by an 
increased sensitivity to the consequences 
of our unimpeded technological 
expansion and its impact on our 
environment.  
 Despite this heightened sense of 
caution, though, De Pencier still falls back 
1
Shaw: Anthropocene by Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal, and Nicholas
Published by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2019
  
onto rhetoric that seems to imply a 
concerningly similar kind of deterministic 
trajectory for human technological 
development. He notes that his own 
technology of choice, the camera, 
emerges as a “natural evolution” of the 
distinctly human capacity for abstract 
thought, which, unlike earlier mediums of 
artistic expression, is anchored by a 
“dispassionate scientific credibility” (206). 
Thus, De Pencier both metaphorically 
reinscribes himself within a biological 
account of technological development 
and, more significantly, leans into the 
exact kind of deterministic inevitability 
that informed his grandparents’ 
generational apathy toward 
environmental degradation. By situating 
himself and his work as both inheritors of 
and culpable participants in the 
Anthropocene, De Pencier allows for a 
strange form of ambivalence to hang over 
the project’s intervention, as he aims not 
to “point fingers or disavow our own 
culpability” but rather invites his viewers 
to “witness these places and react in their 
own individual fashion” (206). 
 This technologically mediated 
ambivalence is most evident in the 
sequences of photographs that make up 
the bulk of the book’s contents. 
Burtynsky’s “Morenci Mine” series, for 
example, confronts its viewer with the 
sheer scale of the devastating 
environmental impact of copper mining 
while simultaneously rendering it as an 
oddly mesmerizing spectacle. In this way, 
the photographs take on an uneasy 
ambiguity, as both unavoidable testimony 
to ongoing environmental degradation 
and striking images in their own right. As 
De Pencier observes, “[i]t’s hard not to 
marvel at the engineering ingenuity of the 
massive industrial sites we filmed, and 
equally hard to ignore the devastation 
they represent” (206). 
 It’s these moments of tension where 
Anthropocene captures Burtynsky, 
Baichwal, and De Pencier’s 
“Anthropocene Project” at its most 
vulnerable angle. Precariously positioned 
somewhere between concerned 
advocates against humanity’s damaging 
interventions into the environment and 
awestruck observers of the impressive 
scale of the damage, Burtynsky, Baichwal, 
and De Pencier exemplify the grimly 
conflicting realities of being an 
environmentally engaged artist in the age 
of the Anthropocene. 
 
DAVID SHAW is a PhD student currently 
studying at Concordia University. His work 
is supported by the Social Sciences and 
Humanities Research Council of Canada 
(SSHRC). 
 
2
The Goose, Vol. 17, No. 2 [2019], Art. 12
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol17/iss2/12


Anthropocene by Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal, and Nicholas De Pencier

Wilfrid Laurier University

The GooseVolume 17 | No. 2 Article 126-12-2019Anthropocene by Edward Burtynsky, JenniferBaichwal, and Nicholas De PencierDavid ShawConcordia UniversityPart of the Arts and Humanities CommonsFollow this and additional works at / Suivez-nous ainsi que d’autres travaux et œuvres:https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegooseThis article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Goose by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Cet article vous est accessible gratuitement et en libre accès grâce à Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Le texte a été approuvé pour faire partie intégrantede la revue The Goose par un rédacteur autorisé de Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Pour de plus amples informations, contactezscholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended Citation / Citation recommandéeShaw, David. "Anthropocene by Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal, and Nicholas De Pencier." The Goose, vol. 17 , no. 2 , article 12,2019,https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol17/iss2/12.  Anthropocene by EDWARD BURTYNSKY, JENNIFER BAICHWAL, and NICHOLAS DE PENCIER AGO Goose Lane, 2018. $35.00  Reviewed by DAVID SHAW  Anthropocene is the textual counterpart to Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal, and Nicholas De Pencier’s series of photographic exhibitions, films, and virtual and augmented reality installations that make up their massively ambitious “Anthropocene Project.” While Anthropocene aims to be both a methodological account of their collaborative process throughout the project and a more portable reproduction of some of their collective’s photographic works, the book is at its most effective as an artifact of the dense and potentially irresolvable tensions that are inherent in the concept of the “Anthropocene” itself. Hubristic yet humbling, planetarily vast yet still deeply personal, Anthropocene emerges as a document of the challenges that face anyone who aims to represent back to humans the damage that humanity has inflicted on the planet.  The Anthropocene names the proposed epoch during which human activity has become a major force on the earth’s geological and environmental systems. Since it was coined in the early 2000s by atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and ecologist Eugene Stoermer, the term has served as a catalyst for a wide range of academic and artistic interventions, each seeking to grapple in their own way with humanity’s newfound role as a geological force, as well as challenge the concept of the Anthropocene itself. As Baichwal asks in her brief reflection on her and her collaborators’ work in Anthropocene, “[h]ow do we convey, despite our brevity as a species, the magnitude of our impact?” (202). The problem of scale is clearly one of the central undertakings of Burtynsky, Baichwal, and De Pencier’s work: photographic series such as Burtynsky’s “Dandora Landfill,” which examines one of Nairobi’s largest dumping sites of industrial, agricultural, and medical waste, render the impacts of human activity in grim detail. Plastic bottles bearing familiar branded labels are assembled into surreal landscapes of waste, capturing the aggregate effect of individuated human actors on a massive scale.  The inherent tensions built into the concept of the Anthropocene also produce some interestingly contradictory moments within the text. For example, De Pencier characterizes the shifting relationship between humans and technology by attempting to distance himself from his grandparents’ generation, which, he notes, “presided over the ‘Great Acceleration’ after the Second World War, which scientists of the Anthropocene Working Group are touting as the definitive start to the human epoch” (205). As De Pencier goes on to describe, a central driver of his grandparents’ generational culpability is the result of a kind of utopian technological determinism, wherein “human technological progress was inherently positive, [and] a natural extension of the innate impulse to expand to fill the carrying capacity of the environment around you” (205). In contradistinction to this deterministic and vaguely colonial impulse toward expansion, the present moment, argues De Pencier, is characterized by an increased sensitivity to the consequences of our unimpeded technological expansion and its impact on our environment.   Despite this heightened sense of caution, though, De Pencier still falls back 1Shaw: Anthropocene by Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal, and NicholasPublished by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2019  onto rhetoric that seems to imply a concerningly similar kind of deterministic trajectory for human technological development. He notes that his own technology of choice, the camera, emerges as a “natural evolution” of the distinctly human capacity for abstract thought, which, unlike earlier mediums of artistic expression, is anchored by a “dispassionate scientific credibility” (206). Thus, De Pencier both metaphorically reinscribes himself within a biological account of technological development and, more significantly, leans into the exact kind of deterministic inevitability that informed his grandparents’ generational apathy toward environmental degradation. By situating himself and his work as both inheritors of and culpable participants in the Anthropocene, De Pencier allows for a strange form of ambivalence to hang over the project’s intervention, as he aims not to “point fingers or disavow our own culpability” but rather invites his viewers to “witness these places and react in their own individual fashion” (206).  This technologically mediated ambivalence is most evident in the sequences of photographs that make up the bulk of the book’s contents. Burtynsky’s “Morenci Mine” series, for example, confronts its viewer with the sheer scale of the devastating environmental impact of copper mining while simultaneously rendering it as an oddly mesmerizing spectacle. In this way, the photographs take on an uneasy ambiguity, as both unavoidable testimony to ongoing environmental degradation and striking images in their own right. As De Pencier observes, “[i]t’s hard not to marvel at the engineering ingenuity of the massive industrial sites we filmed, and equally hard to ignore the devastation they represent” (206).  It’s these moments of tension where Anthropocene captures Burtynsky, Baichwal, and De Pencier’s “Anthropocene Project” at its most vulnerable angle. Precariously positioned somewhere between concerned advocates against humanity’s damaging interventions into the environment and awestruck observers of the impressive scale of the damage, Burtynsky, Baichwal, and De Pencier exemplify the grimly conflicting realities of being an environmentally engaged artist in the age of the Anthropocene.  DAVID SHAW is a PhD student currently studying at Concordia University. His work is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).  2The Goose, Vol. 17, No. 2 [2019], Art. 12https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol17/iss2/12

https://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1564&amp;context=thegoose

Anthropocene by Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal, and Nicholas De Pencier

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