Lot 3
Edward Burtynsky, RCA (b. 1955)
Lot 3 Details
Edward Burtynsky, RCA (b. 1955), Canadian
MORENCI MINE #2, CLIFTON, ARIZONA, USA, 2012 (FROM THE CONTACT PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION)
inkjet pigment print
signed, titled, dated, and editioned AP3 for artist's proof to label verso; special edition released in support of the Red Cross Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Appeal
30 x 40 in — 76.2 x 101.6 cm
Estimate $10,000-$15,000
Additional Images
Provenance:
CONTACT Photography Festival, Toronto, ON
Note:
Since the creation of the CONTACT Photography Festival in 1997, this community-based event helps to support and unite artists from Canada and around the world. The proceeds from the sale of the works consigned to Waddington’s by the CONTACT Photography Festival help to expand viewership for the best examples of photography on the market today, and further the creative possibilities of the medium in the past, present, and future.
Burtynsky writes about the subject of this photograph, “open-pit mines are wounds we’ve inflicted, and the wonderment they excite easily becomes tinged with pangs of remorse or dread.” Burtynsky calls this storm of feeling ‘‘a reversal of the sublime. In the beginning, ‘the sublime’ meant us in fear of nature,’’ he explains. “We would look up at a thundercloud or mountain, or across a heavy sea, and be ‘“awe-struck” or powerless. But fast forward to the Industrial Revolution, and 150 years after that, and now we are the awesome and fearsome force that’s reshaping the planet.’’(1)
(1) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/25/magazine/25mag-copper.html