A Thirsty Civilization: Our Risky Relationship With Water in Photographs by Edward Burtynsky

Salton Sea #1, Eastern Shore, California 2009

Edward Burtynsky’s stunning water photographs are aren’t exactly pretty. The Canadian photographer’s aerial shots show a planet fractured and gouged to quench humanity’s thirst. From the arid Texas landscape neatly irrigated into geometric greenery to the tragic oil sweeping the Gulf of Mexico, the photographs offer an almost journalistic account of a civilization grappling with the planet’s least renewable resource: water. “Water is intermittently introduced as a victim, a partner, a protagonist, a lure, a source, an end, a threat and a pleasure,” said Russel Lord, the New Orleans Museum of Art’s photography curator.

Burtynsky’s photographs acknowledge a growing civilization’s need for water while warning us that we may engineer it out of existence. He says in his artist statement:

While trying to accommodate the growing needs of an expanding, and very thirsty civilization, we are reshaping the Earth in colossal ways. In this new and powerful role over the planet, we are also capable of engineering our own demise. We have to learn to think more long-term about the consequences of what we are doing, while we are doing it. My hope is that these pictures will stimulate a process of thinking about something essential to our survival; something we often take for granted–until it’s gone.”

Burtynsky’s photographs have been displayed in major art institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Reina Sofia in Madrid. In 2005, Burtynsky won the TED Prize.