Edward Burtynsky

My father was an amateur oil painter, so some of his oil paintings were on our walls. There was one above the piano of a famous Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko, playing an instrument known as a bandura. I remember that one kind of resonated with me; it was always central in the living room. ”

I no longer see my world as delineated by countries with borders or language, but as seven billion humans living off a single, finite planet. ”

Our planetary system is affected by a magnitude of force as powerful as any naturally occurring global catastrophe, but one caused solely by a single species: us. ”

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

I'm of the belief that you pursue your interests, you pull it all in, and you sort it out later. ”

Wherever you disrupt water from its natural cycle, there's always a winner and a loser. Whoever is the one it's directed towards is the winner, and whoever loses that water is the loser. ”

Berlin has a uniquely haunting nature, symbolic of a problematic system that was created to oppress and divide a nation. ”

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. ”

Humans can really reveal themselves through what they choose to see as the most important or meaningful detail in an image. ”

We have extracted from the land from the moment we stood on two feet. We are working to supply the kinds of materials that are necessary for the lives we've built for ourselves. ”