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I’d like to begin and on this afternoon of ideology that we are losing on traditional territory shared between the

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shelf corporation and the Amish nominations who were stewards of the sled before we arrived we recognized

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respect and appreciate their contributions in shaping the strengthening this community in

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particular and across our country as a fourth welcome everyone

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you’re so good to have you with us this afternoon the agh afternoon talk and film our

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distinguished guests my name is Shelly Paul here I’m the director of the art

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gallery Hamilton and I’m here with my colleagues who was a Bennett curator at

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the big news exhibition tour Cash’s boss there is Ryan and Amanda who are

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responsible for the architects of this afternoon as so many of you currently

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say in the past art really good ours is about three really important qualities

1:15

experiences feelings and ideas and wonderful thing about it’s worth working

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with me in business and the wonderful donation 70

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your work and the film that Rebecca see this afternoon you’re posting samples of

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what aren’t going to do and how your work reminds us or challenges us to

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rethink our relationship to this planet to give you a little bit of the sense of

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how today’s going to work this is going to enlighten us traitor and is that

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going to speed and also to our questions and answers for about an hour there will be a 15 minute break for Washington

2:12

specific questions and then they’ll screen the film at 4:00 p.m. before I

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asked Melissa to say a few words about the exhibition right I would like to thank those that are here this afternoon

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and who really helped to support the work that we do with the art gallery of

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bathrooms like today I will see institution our you see Eileen sponsor

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gowing’s and of course our community partner of water heater switch and board

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member and I’d also like to point out that we have the mayor of thing happens here with us what happens is from the

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region and of course the art gallery is the largest oldest Museum in this part

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of Australia mentioned were thrilled to

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be able to feature and as an important artist in our permanent collection our exhibitions of educational programming

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this season are centered on environmental and social justice issues and EDD is one of the leading artists around the world who

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effectively draws us into these issues through his supply of energy and

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verticity was born and raised in st. Catharines us has an invention so early exposure to the sights and images of

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jump of the General Motors plant in his hometown helped to formulate the developer has photographic work in the

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early 1980s he studied photography at Ryerson University and then founded to run all image works which is obediently

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ography lab today his work began locally and expanded to explore industries and

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manufacturing across Canada and is now increasingly international scope his photographs are included in the

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collections of over 60 major museums around the world including the National

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Gallery of Canada the Museum of Modern Art and they do Guggenheim Museum in New York and the tape water exhibitions of

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his work have been held in major museums across North America and Europe and his images appear in numerous curiata was

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each year in addition to his eleven monographic books ukrainian there the

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lectures on photography having spoken at the National Gallery of Canada George Eastman House the TED Conference and

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board pretends these distinction to include the TED Prize and the Governor

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General’s Award and visual media arts in 2006 he was awarded the title of the

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Officer of the Order of Canada and currently holds seven of honorary Doctorate degrees so for over 35 years

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verticity has been following his artistic instincts and political ideologies to expose us to everything

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from the geological impacts of resource extraction to human rights issues in the global oil industry as Shelley mentioned

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we’re extremely grateful for a very large donation that heard about his photographs giving to us at the gallery

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and now on view the third of that gift so we have about 23 of the works of you now and over time

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we’ll bring out more so but you get to see the bomb and today it’s our honor to have adhere to have us to be further to

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the complexities of the issue [Music] [Applause]

5:49

[Applause]

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[Music]

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[Music]

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[Music] and I’ve always felt that I didn’t have to – also the fact that this region and

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this very averse country and I think in

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many ways I believe that my work is also a direct outcome of living here in this

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region and at a very early age being

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able to both steam the industrial slide is what happened vii a chance to see the

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MacKinnon factory crank cases but I also

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had a father who loved to go out mushroom picking he was from from the Ukraine from Europe so he brought a lot

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of European traditions we had in st. Catherine’s we had our own you know farm in the backyard we raised rabbits we

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went smelt fishing when there were smells in Lake Ontario and and also went

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fishing into the north and I got to see places like Kapuskasing because there were some friends that we had there and

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I also got to go fishing in places like the halliburton Highlands and that and

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really experience the the the north and I think that only after many years of

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working that I realized the profound effect that had because not everybody has a chance to kind of experience that

8:01

kind of pristine nature and I think it’s an important thing in the formation of an identity in that I

8:09

can remember at times I’d be somewhere you know way north and Red Lake where I don’t think anybody being canoeing and

8:15

you know five days into the interior I’m thinking I’m walking along and a bush I’m thinking I might be the only person

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who’s walked this land and or maybe ever you know and the notion that that this

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place exists without us this is what nature has intended for this place this is before we come and change it and if

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you were for instance born and raised in Holland for instance where over half the

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country has been reclaimed from the sea every square metre has been planned has been carved up and sold and planted with

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a tree that tree is there because somebody wants that tree there whereas here we see nature in a van it’s very

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base cosmic level this is what what our planet would look like without us and I

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think that’s an important thing to know because without having that deep sense of that place you can’t feel its loss

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and I think what my work over the many many years has been about looking

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towards what what’s happening with the with a human experiment with a 7.5

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billion of us moving towards 8 billion and what is that what’s the consequence

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to the to that place to the place we call nature and we kind of in a very dangerous way have separated ourselves

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from nature I think we see nature as outside of ourselves and we are of of

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another order and I think that’s a very dangerous thing that we’ve accepted that

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we aren’t part of that natural ebb and flow and that is something outside of us

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and it’s a very recent word in terms of human history it’s so it’s around 300 years old just before the romantic

9:58

romantic the revolution happened is where we began to use the word nature or

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something outside of us and but it is but it’s that thing that I began

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thinking about because a lot of my work was looking at the pristine

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landscape and I spent years going out there with my four by five camera and trying to find these moments these

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moments where somehow it transcended in a way the the finality of what it is or

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the chaos of what it is and where that chaos all of a sudden forms an image that seems as if it was always meant to

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be an image the lights if we can pop

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them down a little bit more just to get the images more images and it was in

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these kind of landscapes that I began to discover a kind of way of seeing that as

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I moved through these very chaotic and complex landscapes it would be like at

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this one moment where the whole image would kind of come together it would just it wasn’t over here six inches that

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way or wasn’t six inches that way it was there and and so it was that kind of

11:14

training I kind of saw being out there in nature and trying to find these images and I did it for years and took

11:20

hundreds and hundreds of images and it was in doing that that I felt it was kind of like a musician practicing

11:27

scales so that they can eventually start to you know play for four with

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orchestras and to me that was what I was doing I was training my eye but and I

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kept making these pictures singing can I go into the world with as an artist just making these images and for me the

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problem was that they started to feel a little nostalgic it’s like this is a period that that has passed us this kind

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of celebration of the pristine landscape and what it means and and and the Ansel

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Adams and the Edward Weston that preceded me in the Elliott Porter who worked in color all these artists who

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were the ones I looked at when I was growing up and who I admired they had

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told that story so how do I go and revere that landscape yet again and try

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and make it fresh and alive and that’s when I began to realize that the thing

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the other part of my growing up the industry so when I went into that factory when I was seven I knew my

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father worked there he worked at the MacKinnon’s plant and there was this brick wall on Ontario

12:30

Street and I would go by that brick wall all the time and I’d hear the forge plant but I didn’t know what was there

12:37

and when I finally got to see it as his seven year old boy I saw the molten metal I saw what happens what you need

12:44

to do to build a car this is just part of the car this is just the engine this is just a steering and this there’s a

12:51

whole other world that exists on the other side of those walls that create the things that we drive around and then

12:57

take for granted and then it also occurred to me that all that metal has to come from somewhere it comes from

13:02

nature where is that place I started being curious about what’s on the other side of the wall what’s on the other

13:07

side of that fence where the metals come from and why isn’t that we don’t why don’t we know that much about it why are

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we so disconnected from the things in which we engage with every day so that’s

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when I started to think more about not the pristine landscape but how we’re how

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we’re engaging in that place we call nature and how were usurper whether it’s

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iron ore or or oil or even water as we

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harvest water from the landscape for our cities all these things have an impact on a habitat every time you’d live for

13:46

instance take water we’re that you’re the winner whoever gets the water wins and wherever whoever doesn’t get the

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water as a loser is not a benign game so the rail cut series became the really

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one of the first series where where museums are to take interest in my work

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so back then it was a National Film Board Stills division that then became

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the CM CP can a museum contemporary photography which then has now become CBI the Canadian photography Institute

14:17

at the National Gallery it’s all been amalgamated into one but that was in 1983-84

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they were already collecting my work and at that time the art of photography

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there was a bit of an uptick in the 70s but by the early 80s like nobody was

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buying it as art that it was kind of seen as museums weren’t

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collecting it it was kind of seen as something something outside of the of the mainstream art world and so it was

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very difficult to make a go of it so I was taking these pictures without a real

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market out there without collectors really looking at it but I was committed to it I loved it I knew I had found my

15:01

calling which I feel of anybody who has that fortune to really know what they want to do it’s it’s a very it’s a gift

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and I felt I had this gift and I had to pursue it so because the market wasn’t there I

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couldn’t sell my work other than to the institutions which certainly wasn’t enough and I have to also have mentioned

15:19

that the Canada Council those early grants that I got meant so much to me

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they were as is my education at Ryerson and I and I don’t borrow Michael Gubler

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here Rob gue Blair was my first year teacher when I went to Ryerson 1976 and

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it was the formation of that education learning about photography around the

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world and art around the world and and becoming exposed to the international world of art that was a again key to the

15:49

formation of what I wanted to do and having those great instructors but then also you know being able to get that

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funding that early funding in eyes as soon as I graduated out of Ryerson I had I already had a candidate council grant

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within a month of graduating and the wind in my sails and the kind of

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confidence that it gave me to go out there and continue pursuing my vision you know that can’t be underestimated

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what it does for a young artist to have that support at that early stage of their career and in 1983 I got a

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significant grant which was a B grant at that time which in 83 it was just under

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$20,000 which gave me the opportunity to travel all of North America that I could

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get with my car so I went Canada United States mostly and I did the see examples all of which I did Mines and I also did

16:40

a series on homesteads examples all of which are currently on exhibit

16:47

at the gallery so the whole so this rail cut series it was simply looking at this

16:52

thing that this ribbon of Steel that crossed our country 150 years ago Plus and how it transformed that landscape

16:59

how BCE was opened up and how all those trees were then coming back to the east and I work in a building that has BC

17:06

Douglas fir as its main structural supports and most of the big warehouses

17:11

in Toronto and Hamilton were built with BC fur so all of a sudden all these resources started coming back to us so

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to me I took rather than take a heroic picture of these rail cuts going through

17:23

the landscape I decided to do something to look to confront it to shoot it straight on to just have that band of

17:29

Steel represented at the bottom of the frame as a constant motif from frame to frame and to make one ponder what does

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this ribbon of Steel mean to to to our to our country to our society to nature

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to the Industrial Revolution to all those things to urbanization and it is

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the key thing so I looked at it from that point away as a meditation of the

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rail and what it means as it goes through a landscape the mind work was

17:58

really critical at that time too and I started looking at mines and you know to have all the things that we have to have

18:06

communications with with copper wire and electrical motors and to have iron which

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builds most of our cars and steel etcetera and that I started thinking well these mines are have always been or

18:21

we’ve been you know that we’ve started with a Stone Age then with the Iron Age and the Bronze Age and you know now

18:27

you’re were in the computer Information Age and all these ages are there but those earlier the Stone Age and the

18:32

Bronze Age and all those in the Copper Age irony they’re all still alive and well but they’re functioning on a scale

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that’s almost unbelievable and it’s through the technological revolution that we have now been able to function

18:45

at that scale so this I shot in 1983 which was that then purported that’s the biggest open pit copper mine in the

18:51

world the Kennecott Copper Mine just outside of Salt Lake City and at that

18:57

time they were moving 450 I think thousand tons of material on a

19:02

daily basis what was interesting is that the whole train so you can see you start looking at it or you can’t really see it

19:08

in the image but by one of those trucks you can actually make it out so I’m shooting large-format

19:13

but it’s banana it’s one of school buses is the yellow bus and when you see the yellow bus all of a sudden the keys in

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the image and what I began to think about this is that what we’ve done and

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what would the sublime pre industrial revolution was seen as nature the force

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of nature that dwarfed us so a big storm so you think of Turner and lashing

19:36

himself to the mass to witness and to experience the storm at sea the breaking up of a ship or Moby Dick in the whale

19:44

so the nature was the omnipresent awesome fearful force that we are diminished and

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yet inspired by and so it to me in many ways a Content the notion of the sublime comes from there but what I started

19:56

thinking is well the new sublime is the Industrial Revolution and the scale in

20:02

which we create theatres in which we are dwarfed within the own theaters or of

20:07

our creation which these Minds to me were like the inverted pyramids of our time so to me it was like how do I begin

20:16

using a single frame using the camera to become again that witness of these

20:21

places to bring these places from the landscape from where we take them in nature and and then show them within our

20:29

urban settings through the medium of art and through the meeting of images and books and films to be able to begin to

20:37

connect us back to all these things that we cannot survive a day without in our

20:43

cities but yet in many ways which we’ve just take for granted that it’s there it will always be there and why should it

20:51

concern me and and so for me as an artist it was really interesting to try

20:56

to to become the mediator between that pristine landscape and how we’re

21:01

disturbing it and what we’re taking from it and the scale of which we’re taking from it and then bringing the using the

21:08

medium of a lens based medium and using it in a fairly in a relatively

21:15

accurate way in other words I don’t I use the digital technology or before

21:22

that I used analog technologies to retouch so I’ve always retouched and

21:27

I’ve managed you know the image through contrast and color and density but I

21:34

don’t use Photoshop as a compositional tool I’m always allowing this to still

21:39

be somewhere that I can take you to stand you in front of if it hasn’t changed and say this is where the

21:45

picture was taken so I’m still always referring to the real world in my work

21:51

so I’m not trying to do like a Jeff wall or Andreas Gursky where they go in there

21:56

and they rebuild and they’re using photography more like a painter they’re just using the world for the parts that

22:02

they need and recomposing them into the image that they want I’m still being true to the world I’m still allowing the

22:08

world to telescope itself through my images and say this is a place out there

22:14

and it started so I started doing more and more research thinking about well

22:20

how do I keep extending this so I did a whole series on minds as well and then I started thinking quarries and it

22:27

occurred to me that I’ve done mines for many many years so in the early nineties I thought okay quarries we remove stone

22:34

by the block and what was interesting about that is mining is it’s kind of

22:40

more kind of following the ore body blasting it up and harvesting it you

22:46

know with with big front loaders and trucks whereas this would be more structural removing out a block at a

22:52

time would leave a much more much more interesting architectonic pattern behind

22:59

it from that taking so it was the first time where I just imagined that there have to be these places these

23:06

dimensional stone quarries because we use stone all the time we use stone for gravestones we use stones for sidewalks

23:11

we use stones for buildings for for marble countertops so there’s somewhere

23:17

where we’re taking it I need to find that place and that’s where I started to research and go beyond kind of my normal

23:24

place of looking and taking something out of my imaginations name thinking there has to be a place like this and then finding

23:30

that place 3 and became a mode of

23:35

operating and also in 1993 having done this work and I actually found a lot of

23:44

subject matter and Barry outside of Barry of Vermont and the guys that Barre Vermont the the the administration the

23:53

general manager said hey if you like these you would love the quarry’s in

23:58

Italy in Canada so I took that as a signal to okay I’m gonna go to another

24:04

country I’m gonna stop just going to North America I’m gonna go beyond that I’m going I’m gonna go to Italy to do

24:10

these morrow and I didn’t speak Italian so I had to find an Italian fixer who could then help manage all the moving

24:17

parts to get me into these quarries and then to get me to shoot there so these are now in so they did a whole series of

24:24

these go did I do something ok so I did

24:35

it I started working with these quarries and I started going outside of North

24:41

America I started to think of the world and that 1983 tonight was 1993 trip to

24:49

Italy again gave me the confidence that I can go and take a flight and go

24:54

somewhere and continue doing my work in places so then whatever the idea I had I

25:01

no longer limited it to Canada or United States I just said it’s anywhere in the

25:07

world so wherever that activity is I will go there which was again another

25:14

big leap in my my process and how I thought as an artist and and and my

25:21

willingness to kind of take bigger risks to go to countries where I couldn’t

25:26

speak the language and then China became this okay I did a whole bunch of other

25:32

things but I thought okay the Industrial Revolution as we know it has has been firmly leaving the West

25:38

and reestablishing itself in china so the simple idea was well I want to go

25:44

and see number one what that looks like where did it where does it reestablish itself what does it look look like and I

25:50

assumed that it would have scale to it that whatever scale we were operating on now they’re the manufacturers for the

25:57

world using our techniques and processes and the machines that we developed here in the West but now this they’re gonna

26:03

scale them up into these massive factories so that was a simple idea I went there I said I want to look at how

26:10

China is is scaling and enjoy and taking becoming the next iteration of the

26:17

Industrial Revolution and one of the places that I thought I should go and start with was the largest dam being

26:25

built on the planet is the Three Gorges Dam which took 20 years to build it was

26:31

a continuous pour for 20 years of concrete in cement and and then created

26:40

a reservoir that goes back 650 kilometers when they filled it and in

26:46

terms of the biggest dam before this was the Ashland dam which was twelve thousand megawatt Dam just to give you

26:55

perspective a nuclear power plant is about a thousand megawatts or a big coal

27:01

burning plant is about a thousand megawatts per per plant or per reactor

27:07

the this.when finish was going to be twenty seven thousand megawatts over two

27:14

times bigger than anything ever attempted and in fact when they did fill

27:20

it that reservoir it only because it’s the Yangtze River and that flows and

27:26

there’s so much flow coming off of the Tibetan Plateau which feeds it and it’s

27:31

been getting more and more water down the river so part of the dams objective was to prevent flooding downstream and

27:37

particularly the city called Wuhan but so they could control the floods they

27:43

they they release a lot of the water pre floods and drop the whole level of the reservoir and then when the spring comes

27:49

it fills up again and they’re able to control the flooding downstream but when they did fill the reservoir the first

27:56

time it took 15 days and that’s not always a case they can be think of the Glen Canyon Dam or Mead lake or powell

28:04

lake and on the Colorado both of them took about 15 16 years to fill because they couldn’t just stop the water and

28:10

let it go whereas here so much water was coming through in 15 days they were able to fill the 650 kilometer long reservoir

28:19

which actually was measurable as a wobble on the planet from that weight displacement so because think of it it’s

28:25

it would be like a Lake Ontario but it starts at Toronto and 650 kilometers

28:30

would be Quebec around Quebec City so that’s the size of the reservoir they filled in in 15 days so again humans

28:39

working on a scale that was unimaginable you know previously and to the to the

28:48

point where actually can be measured and the way they measure it is it’s the same thing like major earthquakes major

28:55

volcanoes that might go off can also be measured and it’s usually it’s it’s astronomers who have high high

29:03

resolution telescopes are based on locked on to different stars so if the if there is a bit of a wobble or if

29:08

there is anything that’s move that affects the earth and it’s been can be

29:14

measured a very very menu level so this is one of the biggest factories that I

29:20

could find at the time so my research that now became very intense so I had a guy hired that he’d go for months at a

29:27

time going from one factory to the next looking taking pictures of the place

29:33

sending it to me and saying what do you think and then I’d send it back and say can you find this view here or something a

29:40

little bit more over there and then he would you know come back and I like that

29:45

that’s how he did this one it was back and forth with him with NOAA and going back and forth and him sending me

29:51

digital pictures and early digital days and sending them over the Internet I look at them I’d critical

29:58

could critique them send and send them back and then when I got there at that by the time I got there I already knew

30:04

what the picture I was trying to make and where I’d have to stand and so we just go in there and start producing the

30:10

shot this is one of the biggest chicken packing plants they were doing a hundred

30:17

million chickens a year so they’re all processing chickens and turning him into kabobs then so I did China and then I

30:27

started thinking thematically in other ways so I did a whole project on oil and it was the same thing I said well you

30:34

know the same idea I don’t know where my where the iron comes from or where the copper comes from where stone comes from

30:40

but I also I remember having this kind of Epiphany and I was on my way up to do tailings work in Sudbury in 96 and and I

30:50

I was going up the I guess it’s the 400 now it was and I was heading up the

30:56

highway and I was up I think it’s 69 is after that and I was going along that piece of Road and I pulled in it was

31:03

fresh blacktop I was my Volvo and I had to put a oil in and I filled up my gas

31:09

and I had a one of these gore-tex probably made of oil derivative and I

31:14

got in the car and I just looked at everything I looked at my dash was plastic the road was asphalt I just put

31:21

oil and gas in my car my jacket was an oil derivative I said I am surrounded by

31:27

everything that comes from oil but I in the same way I didn’t know where our

31:32

iron or coppers and what those landscapes looked like I didn’t know what that landscape looked like we’re

31:38

oil comes from sure I know what a pumpjack looks like and all that but the places where oil is being harvested on

31:44

on on scale I had never seen those places so I went in search of those

31:50

landscapes where our oil comes from this is in Southern California where the

31:56

first gusher is around the current oil field but this is where the first massive oil finds were discovered and

32:03

they didn’t Reno what to do with it once they got the first gusher and the drilling by the way it’s all about drilling technology which actually

32:10

was invented outside of Petrolia here near Sarnia so canadians were the ones

32:16

who really invented drilling and then it went and then a year and a half later

32:22

they drilled their first successful well in Pennsylvania which Americans now

32:27

claim that was the first hole ever drilled not true it was Canadians so we have to take

32:33

credit where credit’s – I don’t know it was a good thing we added to the world but but we certainly were responsible

32:39

and we became the teachers of drilling around the world and still are considered and I do believe that’s why

32:44

mining is still such a central thing to Canada as well so I went I also went to

32:50

places where unconventional oil was being harvested like mining operations so this is the oil sands and in Alberta

32:56

so I started shooting oil sands in 2003 and then continued I’ve been back about four or five times and again giving one

33:04

the idea that oil is the 12% of the oil sands is bitumen and it’s it’s literally

33:12

like a early version of oil but it still needs about another you know thirty

33:17

billion thirty million years or 40 million years to get fully cooked but

33:23

but this is an early version and again one of the issues that I always felt was

33:28

going to be a central and challenging issue for Canada to exploit that oil is

33:34

to create a massive carbon footprint that I could only assume at the time and

33:40

even in 2003 that this is going to become more and more of an issue as the concerns for co2 in the atmosphere

33:46

become more and more pressing but one of those trucks that’s the one that you see

33:51

that the bottom there these trucks are massive I’m sure you’ve seen images of

33:57

people standing beside them but that’s a four four hundred tons of material that

34:05

the Machine the loader loads a hundred hundred thousand tons per scoop so again

34:13

the the scale of these machines and the scale of this operation so now the oil sands in terms of surface area

34:23

is the largest surface oper mining operation on the planet oriole and one

34:28

operation I think Suncor the amount of material Suncor moves on a yearly basis

34:35

exceeds all of the sediment displacement that the planet can produce in a year so

34:42

one operation is actually moving more sediment than all of the Senate moved by

34:48

nature through rains and rivers and erosion again looking at the culture

34:54

that’s the car culture that’s the that’s evolved out of oil and this was like

35:00

there called the breezewood where they discovered that between this is a

35:05

pennsylvania turnpike is the highway up top and there was a state highway that was further about a half a kilometre

35:12

away from the turnpike and every franchisee knew that that as you came off that’s you know that would be a rest

35:19

stop and they all set up there’s no town that the closest town is within 20 kilometers everybody has to drive in to

35:24

work here so it’s just a kind of this weird you know drive-through anomaly and

35:33

now they’re about apparently about seven or eight breeze woods they call them in America where this freaky moment where

35:39

the the freeway and the actual other highway are apart from each other and it’s that little connecting bit that

35:45

allows franchises to be able to survive in though in those remote areas and then

35:54

also the thing that I also began to learn is that the thing that humans

36:01

produce the most of the thing that we are best at making is waste we are the

36:09

largest producers of and that’s the singular greatest thing that we do is the the waste whether it’s or our tires

36:16

or are dead cars or one of the biggest things that that represent waste but we

36:24

don’t necessarily think of it that way is the burning of all the oil that we do

36:30

as gasoline or diesel and think of it you know that like you know if you fill

36:36

up your tank of car you know it’s your tank in your car you know try and lift that tank up you know as you wouldn’t be

36:42

able to do it for guys would probably it take to lift that tank up well when it’s

36:47

that empty all that weight is now up in the atmosphere and it takes about 70 years to come back

36:55

down again if there are trees and ways to reabsorb it by the way the oceans absorb most of it and that’s the

37:02

acidification of the oceans that’s what’s causing that to rise a bit but think of that amount so if you had all

37:07

like the the 85 million barrels of oil that we consume on a daily basis and

37:15

you’d think all the tons of coal that we consume on a daily basis if you could

37:21

convert all the natural gas and all the coal and all the oil to equivalent

37:26

barrels our data consumption planetaries about 225 million barrels a day so and

37:34

that’s all being put up into the atmosphere on a daily basis so ultimately that is our single largest

37:42

repository and and production of waste but then of course there’s all the

37:47

molecular waste that we can see so the tires and so I decided to look at the end of oil to look at the end of that

37:54

waste stream to see an old derelict oil field and in Baku and Azerbaijan so now

38:00

also you can see that I’m I’m China I’m in Azerbaijan I’m going to far more remote places and remote places called

38:07

Hamilton Hamilton these are these are compressed oil drums being recycled back

38:15

into the system and when I did there the recycling series and I did that between

38:21

I started doing it in 94 95 and then ninety six and seven so about three or

38:26

four years I was doing a coming to Hamilton and also looking and in Toronto

38:31

in the areas around cherry beach but I was interested in this kind of virtuous

38:37

cycle that actually recycling wasn’t a bad it was a good thing it was like we don’t have to go to the primary source again

38:43

to get that material it’s already in the system and we can just loop it back and

38:50

forth in the system so this is all the stuff that was being identified which is

38:55

where they crush they squish out all the air and makes it easier to move around and takes up less space and then whoever

39:01

the metallurgist is that’s running the cupola says I need more of this grade and they’ll take five or ten bales of

39:08

that and throw it into the furnace and melt it down and then you test it again so this was all the scrapyard so I got

39:14

into these scrap yards in Hamilton to look at to look at this recycling this

39:21

is the largest tire pile that that was ever kind of allowed to exist at its

39:29

peak it was well over 40 million tires

39:34

they started dumping them in this area outside of Modesto California which is

39:40

about an hour an hour’s drive south east of San Francisco so when I got there

39:47

they had already reduced that pile down to about 25 million but they were

39:52

burning them in power they created this this power plant that could burn tires

39:59

and scrub the smoke and and I have clean clean air so the EPA was piloting this

40:05

project to try and get rid of it because there was this absolute fear of this catching fire so I went and did a whole

40:12

series on the tire pile over a period of a week and a half I was shooting left in

40:18

three months after I did this shoot it caught fire and burnt for two years so

40:23

it burnt for two years the flames were apparently like 2,500 feet high and

40:30

[Music] again you can’t do anything to put out a tire fire at the fire at that scale so

40:36

it was quite remarkable I went and again that that wood I found that place from

40:42

reading a short story by John McPhee and it was called a duty of care about this

40:49

guy who ran the biggest tire pile in America and then I wrote John McPhee a letter he’s Princeton

40:55

University and he wrote me back and said you know here are the contacts I got

41:00

ahold of them and got permission the oil the oil tankers in Bangladesh I got to

41:08

that through just again hearing a radio it was I think on CBC radio they were

41:14

interviewing this is post Exxon Valdez and they were interviewing both people representing the oil industry but also

41:19

people interpreting the insurance industry and like I remember the insurance guys saying well you know so

41:26

the interviewer says well why you know how could you have prevented this from happening or what can you do in the past

41:32

how’s it how the insurance companies going to deal with with this kind of accident because if you recall Exxon Valdez the captain was drinking went off

41:40

course ran aground and it was one of the worst kinds of oil you could ever have exit out of the hull that destroyed

41:49

literally or really compromised a thousand miles of shore pristine shoreline up in the North Alaska area so

41:58

the insurance guy said well we’re not going to insure single hauled ships because if this was a double-hulled ship

42:05

we can’t stop human error and something like this happening but we could if it was a double hell a hardship that what

42:11

the accident wouldn’t have happened so we’re not going to insure after 2004 so

42:17

leading up to 2004 there was this huge decommissioning of the largest vessels

42:24

ever built by man which are oil tankers and I so when I heard that I said I want

42:32

to go see where they take these things apart I want to see the these things you know being dismantled as again one of

42:39

the largest things we’ve ever built what’s the waste stream of an oil tanker being decommissioned and to cut down so

42:45

in Bangladesh they’re all they were using basic cutting torches and you know

42:52

barefoot half the time or if they had any chute protection it was flip-flops they had no cutting glasses so there

42:59

cutting but no protection for their eyes I think the average life there was no more than 30 years old it was a hugely

43:07

dangerous place it was the most at that time it was considered the most dangerous place in the world to work and they had an average of casualties not

43:14

accidents but deaths about two per day in these ship breaking yards so there’s about 25,000 men working on about 50

43:21

ships at any given time it was like walking through me the world of Mad Max I’d never seen anything like that and

43:27

have never seen anything like that since so it was again opening my eyes to a

43:34

world I had no idea was there and I think very few there’s one photographer

43:40

sebastio Salgado who did it he was doing a whole series on workers and he found himself there

43:46

ten years earlier so even a lot of the foremen and the managers and he said there was a photographer here ten years

43:52

ago and I didn’t know who it was at the time and later found out it was so god oh who I’ve become close friends with

43:59

since then but but he had a whole different frame of reference he was looking at the work and white 30 funded

44:05

worker I was looking at it as and he was working in black and white 35 I was

44:11

working in the large format formal but looking more at the landscape and this

44:16

this decommissioning of these huge hulking ships and around the same time

44:23

as this was happening my career was also changing so my I was finding a bigger market for my work I had gallerists in

44:30

New York San Francisco as well as London so things were changing for me which

44:37

allowed me to think more broadly and more ambitiously about where I wanted to

44:43

shoot and the things that I wanted to capture out there this is actually a figure I’m sorry the feet are cut off

44:50

but he’s barefoot so you can see he’s got no no nothing on his feet and he

44:56

they just dragged this piece of this chunk of ship up onto the shore and what

45:02

you’re looking at is the inside wall of an oil so that’s you know kind of soaked in oil

45:07

so you’re looking at the the inner wall of a chamber of a ship that was that

45:13

would transport oil and what occurred to me too was that all these oil tankers from all around the world were

45:18

coalescing here to be broken down and occurred to me how how much we’re all

45:23

connected I said I am sure somewhere in my life I got onto a plane or jet or I

45:29

got into my car and filled my car off with oil that was transported by one of these that we’re all somehow implicated

45:36

in these landscapes this isn’t you know this is something that each of us engages with on on a regular basis so I

45:42

began to really see that this was something that we all share in that I

45:48

wasn’t you know I was seeing myself outside as an outside observer and

45:53

actually going back to Rob Gubler I mentioned his name earlier who was a

45:59

very influential teacher but one of his first assignments in 1976 was he said go

46:04

out and photograph evidence of man and it was interesting because it’s giving

46:10

you a ticket to say okay I know I’m part of the human species but you know this is a this is me allowing me a ticket to

46:16

observe the human species in a way as an outsider as if I was an alien so in some

46:23

ways out I think it almost framed by the rest of the way I thought of it so I think if I’m an alien and I wanted to

46:28

report back to some other aliens on another planet what we’re doing with this planet what images would I show

46:34

them well I’d show them images of how we’re transforming this planet what are we doing to it so these would be very

46:41

valuable images to an alien who’s wondering what we’re doing to this planet so it’s in many ways it was kind

46:46

of the foundation of being able to see

46:52

see our activity as an outsider as someone from another planet would look

46:57

at it and say what they’re doing and how they do it and there’s both ingenuity in there but there’s also both another

47:03

concern in there at the scale of that taking because we’ve always taken from nature that’s never change all living

47:10

things need to take something from nature to survive whether you’re an whether you’re a bird or whether you’re

47:16

a whale or whether you’re a human there’s this food so there’s a life

47:22

chain that is necessary to support that life and they’re all very complex systems so that’s that can’t change or

47:30

won’t change as long as we’re living on this planet the thing that’s changed is the speed and scale of that taken based

47:37

on what I believe is Industrial Revolution the machinery the technology internal combustion engine and this

47:43

readily available cheap fuel that can give us a mechanical advantage to harvest at scales that were unthinkable

47:50

even a hundred years ago this is one of the most sophisticated drilling rigs

47:55

that actually drilled the hole that the BP oil spill occurred in the Gulf of Mexico and this was all the oil rushing

48:02

out and coming up to the surface around around the the drilling rig and actually

48:08

it’s currently in in the mode of drilling another relief hole to try and shut down that the well that had gone

48:17

[Music] and then started to leak or failed well

48:23

and so this was the deepest again it kind of reminded me of cut almost Mary

48:30

Shelley’s Frankenstein that we you know that we you know we we create a technology or we create bring a life or

48:36

whatever in Shelley’s Frankenstein story but create a technology that we don’t fully comprehend all the risks and then

48:42

it gets away on us and the monster gets out and now we’re trying to contain the monster and and here it’s trying to

48:48

drill to meet up with original hole that’s leaking to to try and stop it

48:54

and and it took him over three months with all the technology available to

49:00

stop that leak that was apparently around 60,000 barrels a day this is what

49:06

when I think of this I also think of the dangers of drilling for oil in the Arctic where you know here they had

49:12

every ship in every business technology and and the weather wasn’t bad whereas if you had a well that went like this

49:19

but they lost control of in the Arctic and all of a sudden it freezes up or you

49:24

know the storms are River and there isn’t a lot of a lot of other ships up there and

49:29

there isn’t a lot of technology or expertise up there you could have a well I believe gopher for a long period of

49:35

time before they figure out how to close it off in a very sensitive area so the drilling and the Arctic has always been

49:41

something that I’ve thought is a very dangerous human thing to do this is

49:46

again part of the operations to contain that fire this is all in the Gulf that’s

49:53

all a lot of those areas is where the oil had seat had been seeping in he’s very delicate areas as well so these are

50:04

areas of water so I was talking about this last thing was about water so after I did oil I thought water is this other

50:11

liquid but with with oil it’s oil still optional there’s still work arounds you can get electric cars you can find other

50:17

ways to to get around but water is not negotiable no water equals no life this

50:26

is Owens Lake and this is a redirection those of you might have seen Chinatown Polanski’s movie but that was really

50:32

largely based on Mulholland and the moving of the Owens rivers water to

50:40

continue growing Los Angeles but it drained the whole Lake so this was a road going in where Los Angeles was

50:46

paying reparation to irrigate the whole bed which was of the lake Owens Lake

50:52

which was about it was excuse me two miles cuz I was in the States but eighteen miles by about 10 miles wide

50:58

and they were trying to prevent their systems on an area of that size which cost well over a billion dollars but

51:05

they were trying to prevent the wind storms from picking up gives a perfect

51:10

bowl and when it came up a lot of heavy metals selenium and others would come up into the air and land on local

51:16

communities lone pine and a few other towns so they were forced to clean it up and if those are you safe to watch

51:23

watermark there’s a series there’s a sequence that shows these wind storms that we found in archival footage of

51:29

Owens Lake the Salton Sea which is another human-made Lake by air it was

51:37

the Colorado River direct it was redirected the farmers a little cofferdam a little dam broke and

51:43

the water redirected so for four years the Colorado River the complete Colorado River was flowing into the Salton basin

51:52

and created this big body of water and then they finally did you know Army Corps of Engineers figured out how to

51:57

how to dam it and how to redirect it back so it went to the Delta and so this

52:03

is still exists and it’s there through our irrigations through the last bits of the Colorado River water before

52:11

it goes into Mexico so 90% of the Colorado River water is used completely

52:17

before it gets to Mexico and they use the last 10% and zero percent gets to to

52:23

its destination and this is the destination it would go to which would be the Colorado River Delta in Mexico

52:30

but it hadn’t seen water now fresh water normally this would be a brackish marshy

52:36

area full of life where a little fish would get their starboard to live off

52:42

the land there now it’s a thousand square miles of desert and and if again

52:47

with water mark you can see the opening scene the woman who’s there talking about there used to be fish on a desert

52:52

well that she remembered when it was still a brackish fully functioning ecosystem and now it’s a desert but what

53:00

this is is basically the pumping action of the ocean now that all of us done so if you’ve seen the Grand Canyon well all

53:06

that void all that silt had to go somewhere well it’s at the bottom of the river in the Delta so that orange is the

53:13

orange of the Colorado of the Grand Canyon though eroded parts and this is

53:20

all the silt from that period but and from that you know millions of years of erosion but now it’s got nothing so

53:27

what’s happening is the pumping action of the tide going up and down this must be a dip in that Delta and what happens

53:34

is as the water retreats it creates these tree formations all the little rivulets go and and they’ve joins

53:39

together and creates these tree forms so so that’s the human and this is a

53:45

landscape that looks natural but it’s a direct result of human intervention

53:52

phosphor tailings in Florida most of our Foster’s for fertilizer come from Florida it’s a huge area for

53:58

phosphorous also from Florida the reprocessing of water the control

54:06

looking at the control of water this is the all-american canal the last take

54:11

this is the last take of water from the Colorado River and it goes to Imperial Valley so this is an aqueduct going

54:20

through California and then this is again a one break off point another as

54:25

smaller aqueducts and what you see on the right is really what that’s what that landscape is it’s a desert and you

54:33

add water on the left and now you have some of the best grade alfalfa because

54:39

it’s so hot in the Imperial Valley on the border of Mexico that you get this fantastic alfalfa it’s such a high grade alfalfa

54:46

that most of it is actually sold to the Japanese for Kobe beef so they’re they

54:51

compress it and then ship it because of getting a better price for it in in Japan again another desert region this

55:01

is Scottsdale Phoenix area and this is a First Nations reserve and they can build

55:08

right up to the edge and it kind of gives you this kind of you know almost each one of those homes if you look at

55:13

it has a pool so you’re in a desert and you have this urban expansion but it’s but again the use of water is pretty

55:22

intense this is another dam up in

55:27

Northern California the reservoir at a very low point they were experiencing a drought at the time

55:33

it’s a shasta shasta lake it’s cold I went to Holland looking at the kind of

55:41

capturing of land through dikes and and water management and that this is all

55:46

reclaimed from the ocean all this land that whole industrial area in the back is all reclaimed land I also looked at

55:53

the control of water through in ancient cultures like the Indian culture and

55:58

just an they’re called stepwells so the would fill up in during the monsoons and

56:04

then throughout the year as as I got drier and drier they would follow this as water down with the steps and then

56:10

the monsoons would come again and there were over about 400 of these step wells built all through it’s the kind of main

56:18

towns called boondi but it’s in it’s in the rajasthan region and this is how

56:23

they had a desert peoples were able to survive there through these step wells which are now all gone defunct because

56:31

of the drilling again drilling for water so they’ve now drilled below the water

56:37

table so these never see water anymore because they now have to go well below the step wells because the towns have

56:43

grown and now they’re drilling deeper and deeper into the aquifer again one of

56:50

the largest arch dams this is like a 14,000 megawatt arch dam in China northern China off the Yangtze a huge

56:57

scale again and kind of quite quite remarkable

57:03

engineering and then this is also in China the release of of silt so they do

57:09

silt release once a year on the Yellow River because any reservoir the thing that kills a dam is as a reservoirs a

57:16

volume in the reservoir gets less and less because the silt keeps building more and more so what they’re doing here

57:22

is they’re doing a massive release of water rapid release of water which would

57:27

then lift all the silt off the bottom of the reservoir and then this is with the water mixed with the silt and then

57:33

pushing it further down down river on the Yellow River which is one of the

57:38

greatest silted rivers so when you look again at the at the film the opening scene is is that silt release again

57:48

agriculture growing growing food in the desert greenhouses in Spain what

57:56

occurred to me was that the way humans have changed a planet more than any other single thing more than roads more

58:04

than cities more than bridges more than anything is farming the amount of prairie land we’ve converted to farms

58:10

the amount of force so we’ve cut down and converted to farms the amount of desert that we’ve flipped

58:17

over into farms through irrigation is by far the largest terraforming activity

58:23

that humans do and if you ever flying on a daytime flight across America that going out Los Angeles just look get a

58:30

window seat and look down and it’s almost anywhere where you can farm it’s farmland it really gives you a real

58:35

sense of how much land we’ve converted to farmland to feed to feed us and

58:41

defeat the animals that we feed and I also looked at these pivot irrigation there’s one of these images on display

58:48

in the exhibition at the AG age this is a town just starting out at the bottom

58:54

each one of these diameters is about a mile diameter if you convert a diameter

59:01

into acreage one of those circles is about 650 acres so they’re very large

59:06

parcels of land these are all from that

59:13

pivot irrigation series so those are

59:20

mile diameters in the middle and those are half mile diameters on the edges so this image is now about a mile and a

59:28

mile on the vertical and three miles on the horizontal and I’m now using a

59:33

Cessna at about 10,000 feet above it to be able to shoot straight down to get

59:39

these images so I found a Cessna that the pilot had cut a hole in the bottom

59:45

of the floor of it so I can stick my lens down and shoot straight down so

59:50

that’s how I got these images this is a trip I chopped it across through Spain

59:57

looking at they’re all over olive oil farms all three farms and also I looked

1:00:05

at other areas this is another farming area in Spain as well

1:00:13

and this was like this farming this this was for me a very remarkable area it’s

1:00:19

called dryland farming where they farm one crop a year mostly malts and hops

1:00:25

and a lot of stuff for the beer industry but also some grains as well and then

1:00:30

but they all those lines were – these are on foothills and all the lines are to prevent erosion during the rain start

1:00:37

the rains come in like January February March they’ve proceeded in about October the rains come starting November and

1:00:45

finish in April and then they harvest May June in the spring and then that’s a

1:00:50

minutes arid dirt the whole it’s a desert region its arid throughout the whole summer but the patterns and the

1:00:56

colors were a Picasso had come from this

1:01:01

area and I keep thinking Guernica and the colors and the kind of forms and I kept thinking you know was he aware did

1:01:08

you know it’s interesting when you get up over the air and you start framing these things a pilot that I was with I

1:01:14

had a chopper pilot I remember he was looking at the edits I was editing the work on my computer that evening after

1:01:21

the flights and he go he said where’s that and I said well we just flew over he says no way he says you couldn’t have flown over

1:01:26

that’s not it’s not possible you know I was flying over I’ve flown over this place 50 times and I said you have but

1:01:32

you haven’t looked at it this way I said when you really isolate it it’s really quite interesting he was fascinated that

1:01:38

he had no idea that this kind of a visual image can be drawn out of that

1:01:43

landscape and so again it’s it really reminds me that you know it’s to see

1:01:51

things you have to attenuate to it it’s like now if I go back and walk through a

1:01:56

forest for instance and try and get to those like those early images try and find that kind of organization in chaos

1:02:03

it’s not there I’d have to again retrain my eye to get back and to really begin

1:02:09

to see those things again aquaculture grow a fish protein from the sea this is

1:02:16

on the largest regions and the things that you might see as a motif going through everything I’m saying is like how do I go from an idea to the specific

1:02:25

place and what are my kind of foundations of research are what’s the biggest example so 70% of all

1:02:33

aqua farming fish protein from humans growing the fish in farms is in China so

1:02:41

that started my okay that’s where most of it occurs in the world okay where’s the highest concentration so that’s why

1:02:47

I’m in this area in China so it’s through research that I’m now looking at the largest example of fish farming in

1:02:53

the world and this is one of the big villages that’s over 25,000 and there’s many of

1:02:59

these there but 25,000 people work there on a daily basis you buy the house and

1:03:05

you buy all the sticks for about I think a floating house with all the boards to

1:03:10

do your first farm there’s about three thousand US dollars so you can set up in business and then you just strap

1:03:16

yourself to the next guy there’s no you don’t pay a rent or any like that it’s just he’s organically growing very unregulated villages on the

1:03:25

water and when I was there at that point with twenty five thousand so they have stores or you can buy stuff there’s a

1:03:30

doctor’s place there’s you know place where you get supplies you know it’s quite fascinating that on on this

1:03:37

floating village the whole world has kind of emerged that has that deals with all the needs of people but it’s in this

1:03:44

kind of organically growing some of the oldest sustainable agriculture in the

1:03:50

world rice terraces in China and this

1:03:57

has been going on for three four thousand years and it’s interesting because they start off when the water in the spring there’s lots of water they

1:04:03

start off and they put eels and little fish and frogs and everything in there and they they pretty much you know lived

1:04:10

there for three months before they put in the rice and then that fertilizes and all the you know the food that they’re

1:04:16

eating and the process and the accretions and all that give fertilizer back into into the into the water into

1:04:23

the soil and then they plant rice harvested at the end of the season they’ve done tests in these these are over three thousand years old and they

1:04:30

can continue to function at this level for tens of thousands users totally sustainable in terms of a way to

1:04:37

their rice to the dough day we do the way we do things today is we’ve pretty much deplete the soils and when we’ve done that completely would then go and

1:04:44

get phosphor might rates and potash and potassium office you know from mining

1:04:49

and put it back in the soil so the soils really are just becoming a vehicle like hydroponics to to use to hold a root

1:04:56

system as we feed it artificially these are also aquafarms for fishing and the

1:05:03

waterfront the human desire this is Cape Coral in Florida one of the largest Army Corps of Engineers you know creating

1:05:12

waterfront out of swampland so actually the buying swampland in Florida is that there’s truth to it they sold tons of it

1:05:19

but but now if these things are there and it’s all you can see although like the water core so everybody gets a

1:05:25

little bit of water frontage it doesn’t go anywhere and the water stagnant and it’s actually like the best breeding

1:05:32

ground for mosquitoes ever so it’s really you know you have to spray in a

1:05:37

lot of these places you have you know you have a pool you can’t have it without as a mosquito netting around it

1:05:44

because you would again that’s the swampland that would be converted to you

1:05:50

know and these are mangroves that they’re converting to urban this is the

1:05:58

one that if you get to see the print every every house has a pool

1:06:03

you know without them there’s a netting above every pool so you can’t actually have a pool here without you know

1:06:09

without the netting and our desire for waterfront the waterfront is more

1:06:15

valuable the spiritual kind of draw of

1:06:23

water and this is in the KU Mela festival and in India the largest

1:06:29

migration I went to the biggest one again you’ll see that in the film where

1:06:34

30 million people over 30 million people went there on the holiest day over the

1:06:40

month it’s a 100 million but on that day it’s 30 million people which in an area

1:06:46

that’s about about 10 kilometers by 8 kilometers so that’s the whole cop population of

1:06:51

Canada like on a postage stamp it’s pretty insane I’ve never been in a crowd

1:06:58

that size the reclaiming of land from

1:07:03

this from the sea this is polders and in Holland and then source of water I

1:07:09

wanted to end that whole water project and the fact that there is still pure water that you can dip a cup into the river and drink it and not worry about

1:07:16

you know heavy metals or bacteria and dying and so water that eternal cycle of

1:07:23

water where snow comes off the oceans the evaporation of the oceans in the Rockies that freshwater and the clouds

1:07:31

getting caught in the mountaintops as snow melting going down into the river and this kind of virtuous cycle and the

1:07:38

relationship between the oceans and the mountains and the land and and the hydraulic hydrological cycle so that

1:07:44

water down in that Creek below is is pristine and that this is a cycle that

1:07:51

we’ll always think about water is it repairs itself quickly if we just stop doing what we’re doing or if we

1:07:57

redirected or break the dam or stop putting the pollutant in there within with the next year that water is

1:08:03

perfectly clean so the water is very forgiving if we give it a chance to to

1:08:08

restore itself so it is this amazing

1:08:13

resource that is around us that is the reason why we can actually you know all

1:08:19

be here is water and there and there’s some beautiful moments in the film where

1:08:24

scientists are talking about about about water so I’m going to quickly just give

1:08:34

you a little preview of this new project

1:08:39

I’m on how many people have heard of this word Anthropocene it’s about 20%

1:08:46

okay now it’s gonna be like a hundred percent so I’m hoping because we’re

1:08:52

calling the next film and project Anthropocene and one of the things that we’re trying to do is to bring awareness

1:08:57

so in many ways what I’ve been doing from my whole last 35 years is speaking about the Anthropocene in

1:09:03

that humans are now you know changing natural systems more than the nature by

1:09:10

a by a quantum leap so we are now the large the greatest changing agents on

1:09:17

the planet and what scientists are basically saying that we have been in the Holocene a very stable period that’s

1:09:25

been about the last 11,000 years in which all civilization human civilization has occurred in that time

1:09:31

from the beginning of the agricultural in the Nile Delta till – you know all

1:09:36

the way to now and then the the communities that were built in religion and and roadways and all the

1:09:42

infrastructure that’s all civilizations the last ten thousand years during the Holocene but now they feel feels

1:09:48

something has happened and the last time we’ve had extinction events on the planet to this degree was 60 million

1:09:55

years ago when a meteor impact hit the planet and that’s when we all the dinosaurs all the big mammals so 70% of

1:10:02

life was extinguished in that one event what happened is it hit off the coast of

1:10:07

Mexico on off the Yucatan Peninsula kicked up an iridium cloud which was the

1:10:12

basis of the meteor the base of rock of meteor kicked up the cloud it created

1:10:19

such a dust cloud that it lasted for over a decade pretty much shutting down photosynthesis

1:10:25

and all the big mammals and all the big reptiles disappeared leaving birds and

1:10:31

smaller mammals to survive and so the so that was the last big extinction of the

1:10:37

the next big event of that scale and there’s been five of those events one

1:10:43

was from volcanoes that they know of one was from an oceanic inversion of plankton and and so must I think cyano

1:10:51

plankton but this one is the human so we are the agency we are the event that is

1:10:57

causing this next extinction event and it’s the scale of what we operate so

1:11:03

this is again so I’m going back into similar territory mining and but I’m

1:11:09

looking at it and even a grander scale so that machine in the background is called the bagger largest machine ever built on the planet

1:11:17

it’s 300 metres by a hundred metres high and it’s his closet here’s I’m in Borneo

1:11:25

that’s a tropical jungle so palm plantations palm can only grow within

1:11:31

one latitude north or south at least optimally grow north or south of the Equator in tropical forests so those are

1:11:38

at risk along the equator to be converted into palm plantation so that’s a pristine jungle on the right that’s

1:11:45

preparation for palm plantations and that’s happening at a frightening scale this is again prepared ground for 4 palm

1:11:54

and that’s a fresh palm plantation just you know put onto the onto what was a

1:12:02

tropical rainforest these are trees coming down from the

1:12:08

Niger Delta I did a lot of work and now I’m doing work in Africa so these are just a few not in the categories just a

1:12:14

bit a bit of a sampling of the next projects you’re getting a sneak preview of some of the things so these are all

1:12:21

log fan log booms coming down from the niger delta and now being that’s a slum

1:12:27

on the rights called macoco and then the sawmills on the left where they’re

1:12:33

cutting planks of wood for to rebuild and to build the city of Lagos which is the fastest-growing city currently in

1:12:40

the world there they’re receiving about 6,000 new citizens per day coming out of

1:12:46

the countryside current rates of growth put it at 50 million by 2050 and 80

1:12:51

million by 2100 if so I don’t know what a city of 80 million looks like but

1:12:59

[Music] again this is a big some of the new work

1:13:04

I’ve done on mining I’ve now gone to again what’s different about this time as I’m going in there with more resource

1:13:11

I can use helicopters drones higher resolution cameras I’m currently working

1:13:17

with 100 megapixel Hasselblad so these things at 60 by 80 inches you can go in

1:13:23

there and see like every kind of little grain almost so the the resolution I’m getting now is

1:13:28

unbelievable so I’m come back to the subject in the Anthropocene and just showing greater

1:13:34

scale than I was able to even show hurt my earlier works where I didn’t have all

1:13:39

the tools of getting perspective it’s a

1:13:45

big copper mine this is a Cominco tech

1:13:53

Cominco mine and bc again copper mine

1:13:59

tunnels anthro to bation is another terminology so you know imagine if half a million

1:14:07

years from now maybe we’re gone New York is a mound it’s known you don’t see the skyscrapers anymore but if you

1:14:13

get underneath it and it’s still available the whole subway system is still present and all the switching and

1:14:18

all the different breakers and wiring and all that will still be there so the

1:14:25

scientists see the geologists see it as deep time that tunnels and anything underground can can move into deep time

1:14:34

into millions of years into the future and so as a as a footprint as as human signature they see that these are

1:14:42

underground tunnels I did in in in Russia this has produces potash for the for

1:14:49

agriculture so all the red is used to be an ancient seabed this is about a thousand feet underground oil in the

1:14:57

Niger Delta they produce about as much oil as we do 2.2 million barrels a day but this is a huge oil leaks in the

1:15:04

Niger Delta it’s it’s a very compromised this is all illegal oil stealing oil

1:15:10

from the oil companies like shell and then bunkering them and then this was a kind of like almost warzone where the

1:15:16

government literally burnt out all of their illegal sites so this is a year

1:15:22

later in the aftermath that battle I also just vast I just shot

1:15:29

this maybe a month ago this is Los Angeles around Long Beach again a vast

1:15:37

industrial this is in Florida fertilize

1:15:45

again pataskala stiix you know the

1:15:57

scientists are referring to them as techno fossils the number one techno fossil things that nature can’t produce is cement

1:16:03

the concrete and so that’s that’s a human created material that nature can’t

1:16:10

create but then all plastics aluminum this nature can’t create aluminum any alloys anything like that are considered

1:16:18

techno fossils that will leave a footprint into deep future and also

1:16:24

started looking at you know the ways out this is a lithium lithium mining and the

1:16:30

Atacama Desert in Chile the largest lithium mine so lithium and they pump it

1:16:39

out of the ground and you can see that it’s it’s it’s less than 1% of lithium

1:16:44

up in the top where it’s blue and then as it evaporates they keep moving it down and then that deep green it’s

1:16:50

actually where it’s ready to go and it’s about 6% lithium and then they’re able to harvest the lithium it takes about

1:16:56

from when they pump it out to over there about four months of evaporation so it’s a constant cycle of evaporating I’m also

1:17:05

working so I’m just showing a little bit of what the new technologies I’m using so I’ve shot this I’m using cameras and

1:17:11

and special tripod heads where I can take an image and compose it with this is composed with two hundred overlapping

1:17:18

but about two hundred frames at 50 megapixel camera put together into about

1:17:23

a 10 gigabyte printing file so the resolution I’m working with now is I

1:17:29

could never even imagine so I just actually I’m showing a small little corner of the MA

1:17:34

and just giving you a sense of the resolution in that corner so you can so

1:17:40

the experience you’ll have is an image the size of a billboard and I’m having an exhibition this this year in

1:17:47

September at the AG oh and the national gallery of all new work but I’ll be showing some of these for the first time but you’ll be able to approach billboard

1:17:55

size image at the same resolution that I’m working on right now with the images in the gallery so it’s I’ve always been

1:18:02

fascinating at the quality like this is a drone and this is put together with

1:18:07

about I think it’s about 20 images from

1:18:13

if I’m AHA at megapixel Hasselblad on a drone fixing drone in space and just mapping the whole area and then

1:18:20

researching it later so I’m using this high perspective enabled to that’s giving you a sense of

1:18:25

my hundred megapixel how supplied there was a still on a drone so I’m in I’m

1:18:32

working here in Lagos there was a story that was written so that raffiq katchadorian he’s a gentleman right

1:18:38

there so he’s he was writing a story for me for The New Yorker which was published last December in The New

1:18:44

Yorker was a profile on me the guy the the gentleman over there with a gun so

1:18:50

he’s got an ak-47 he’s our guard Jim is one of my key one of my my key

1:18:56

researchers and died on the ground who helps me produce all these projects he’s my client so he gets me out there helps

1:19:04

do a lot of negotiating and then and then my drone operator Mike Reid so he’s

1:19:10

so we were landing it on that concrete area and then changing so what I did

1:19:15

this shot we landed the drone I found the shot with a with a wide-angle lens

1:19:20

in the drone with geo lock that we figure out where what the the latitude longitude and altitude are brought it

1:19:27

back down I put a telephoto lens back on locked it back up into space he can lock it within about a six-inch area and

1:19:37

which it’ll just hover in a locked position and then I’m using a telephoto lens and then I’m shooting

1:19:42

like about 40 images with 100 mil millon with a hundred megapixel camera back and forth creating these massive printer

1:19:48

files that I can then then you can walk up and just see every person everything that’s going on in this picture you got

1:19:54

all of a sudden experience it this is showing you the size of the images also

1:20:05

I’m working with some other technologies the extinction events that we as humans are leading the extinction so these

1:20:11

elephant tusks are all captured from poachers they had tusks they’ve

1:20:17

estimated about nine thousand elephants almost 20 thousand tusks they did eleven

1:20:22

eleven pyres which were burned so it took him a week to so we were there for the whole building of these tusks piles

1:20:27

and and then and then witnessed the burning of them this is a day after so

1:20:33

I’m still shooting with stills but I’m also shooting with other technology I’ve got a drone with with an epic film

1:20:40

camera so we’re doing film so we flew that high-res 5k film camera right

1:20:46

through the burning of these eleven piles of tusks also just you know on the

1:20:54

ground video recording of it and again using you know thirty high res cameras

1:21:00

this is part of the crew that’s that my partners and collaborators here we’re doing something different which is we’re

1:21:06

shooting with 240 megapixel cameras were shooting at us compile the day before it

1:21:11

it was to be burned they go way and we captured about three thousand images with these high res cameras and we were

1:21:18

able to go way way up high and capture the images from the top so you have to get all around inside out and then we’re

1:21:24

able to take all of those separate images and put them into software and when you look at it the software then

1:21:29

puts puts all these things together and creates these polygons so this is a

1:21:34

three-dimensional polygon so that’s the whole web all of those tusks files then

1:21:39

what you do is you there’s another file which we use which is this file which is the the skins at all so this is your

1:21:47

this is the all of those the the surface and all the lettering and the colors and all of that is the texture map that gets

1:21:55

wrapped around the 3d polygons and when you bring that and wrap it back on to

1:22:02

the tusk pile you end up this is now a recreation that you can now experience in a headset in VR or with a are you can

1:22:10

head sit and walk around it at scale and go up and see everything and it’s a three-dimensional still of that tusk

1:22:18

file so I’m using photography now as a 3d captured tool rather than a single er

1:22:23

image it’s a three-dimensional image that now you can walk around and engage with as well so I’m taking and extending

1:22:29

the lens based medium that I’m working with and starting to create other ways

1:22:34

of experiencing these places that I go in the world and you could take that

1:22:41

also you can take that file and I’ve also turned it into a 3d sculpture so I

1:22:47

have a full-color 3d printer and we’re able to print that the tusks pile as an

1:22:53

object so what I’m gonna show now is this this is going to be about a five-minute snippet from the latest film

1:23:00

on the Anthropocene you’ll hear a few of the voices of the scientists that we’ve been interviewing

1:23:05

in a few of the sites that we’ve gone to and then once we see that then I’ll be happy to take some questions so this

1:23:19

[Music]

1:23:25

[Music]

1:23:40

[Music]

1:23:49

the Anthropocene is the time in the geological record when humans have moved

1:23:58

the planet outside its natural limits

1:24:06

[Music]

1:24:22

the whole acceleration starts with Industrial Revolution it starts with us

1:24:28

that we could make the machines [Music]

1:24:46

[Music] it could be a bleep but it could be a

1:24:51

full-scale Attis traffic change

1:25:10

[Laughter]

1:25:18

[Music] [Applause] [Music]

1:25:32

[Applause]

1:25:40

if you go out into any landscape any landscape except for North Siberia or North Canada it is an anthropogenic

1:25:48

landscape we have not a way to get back

1:25:57

we live now in a different world [Music]

1:26:35

[Applause]

1:26:41

yeah our tough job right now is trying to make the films so when you see the end of it you don’t want to jump off a

1:26:47

bridge so any suggestions are welcome

1:26:52

where is there hope so I’m open to any any questions or observations or

1:26:58

thoughts yes the danger element in your

1:27:07

job like going into some of these places

1:27:14

where you have to hire guards how do you deal with all of that just curious well

1:27:20

I would say on the risks a lot of scale I mean if a photojournalist said go into

1:27:27

war zones I’d say call that ten I’m probably at five you know I think I try

1:27:33

to take real precautions so that when I do the people that I hire have been

1:27:38

vetted usually I’m working with the government agencies in those countries and with people who are operating you

1:27:48

know fairly large scale and just businesses there that know how it works and how to be careful so we proceed with

1:27:56

caution a lot and especially working in places like you know Legos and Nigeria where you know or Port Harcourt where

1:28:04

you really just can’t walk around the chances of kidnapping actually I found out you could by kidnapping insurance

1:28:09

there’s a whole business so I priced it out so while there I could have got it

1:28:16

cost about two thousand dollars would have been for the trip for a three weeks in that area and it’s it’s a guarantee

1:28:24

of $250,000 so if you had kidnapped they´ll kidnappers you just give them

1:28:30

the number and they call them and they call them and then they put a 250 in

1:28:35

escrow and they let me go now and then once once I’m free the the money’s released so it’s like a business so so

1:28:44

you have to be careful when you have really expensive equipment and you look like you know that there’s

1:28:51

a whole product because now when I’m in Lego said by the time I had all the security and the drivers and the

1:28:56

different and all the different people who are helping me make it plus the crew that I have we were traveling and for

1:29:03

vehicles and at any given time there are two over 20 of us on a shoot because

1:29:09

we’re still shooting film and I’m doing also 3d stuff so I have a lot of you

1:29:14

know gear with me as well and you have to have people watching the gear while you’re off doing some other works so

1:29:21

there’s a lot of coordination in these things now so it certainly is a long way from me and a camera in the forest so

1:29:30

but it’s but it’s exciting work and it’s getting me to see I mean one of the things I also was like when I was when I

1:29:38

was studying st. Catharines originally I looked at what are the good jobs to be had there and I went to the the st.

1:29:44

Catharines collegiate and and it was too old I’m making was considered one of the

1:29:50

better jobs and I was and I thought I’ll try and do you know try and become a

1:29:55

tool and die maker but just at that time when I was applying all of the apprenticeship programs had shut down

1:30:02

and they the journey mean an apprenticeship program shut down and all the community colleges had were you know

1:30:09

born at that time so they said well you can go college and get your education but then I thought well do I want to

1:30:15

really be a to it because I studied I did mechanical drafting my brother ended up being an engineer and he still works

1:30:21

he worked for spar and now he works for MDS robotics so he works on the Canada arm and robotics and stuff like that and

1:30:27

I was kind of going down that direction myself and then I thought well I like

1:30:33

the arts a lot and but I didn’t think that I could make a go of it I did go to Niagara College and study graphic arts

1:30:40

and then it was a teacher there that suggested that I had a pretty kind of

1:30:45

innate talent in photography and I had I didn’t taking pictures enough since I was 11 so he said you should maybe go to

1:30:51

two writers soon my husband that’s driving programs you probably do well that and I took that as a cue

1:30:56

that’s why about 20 when I left Catherine’s and then and then I went to

1:31:03

to Toronto I guess that was my first big rescue I’m just going into the big city and get myself an education and and then

1:31:13

I just stayed there and happily and have

1:31:18

extended my so it’s only really the latest stuff I mean you’re always taking a risk when you’re in a small you know

1:31:27

single-engine prop plane or if you’re in a helicopter you know somebody once said

1:31:32

you know you’re depending on 10,000 moving parts working in unison consistently and any one of those parts

1:31:40

can give you a problem so this does it makes you kind of pause for thought but

1:31:45

you know but it’s again when we look with making sure that these are reputable companies that have a you know

1:31:53

a good rigid program for maintenance on these things and it’s only recently

1:31:59

where you know where where there’s a chance of being kidnapped or you know

1:32:06

robbed now that I’m doing a lot of work in Africa there are more sketchy areas

1:32:11

where where where the poverty and the crime is so bad you have to be very careful yes

1:32:36

well I always in the film so I had I had opened up a digital lab in in the city

1:32:43

in a digital component in 1992 back when it was a quadrate hundred and a Meg of

1:32:50

RAM cost 60 bucks I still have I kept the invoice it was 420 Meg’s of RAM for

1:32:57

$36,000 so just to give you a perspective and so when you complained

1:33:03

about the price of computers today don’t sew about so I opened up the lab in

1:33:10

Photoshop and did that in the through the early 90s but I didn’t actually

1:33:15

start shooting digital until around 2005 so it already had 13 years of a digital

1:33:22

lab but nothing actually exceeded the quality of the 4 by 5 or 8 by 10 that I

1:33:28

was shooting but when I started renting helicopters and shooting and trying to shoot with a have 4 by 5 from a

1:33:33

helicopter ever tried that it’s not you know it doesn’t work I did I got a

1:33:40

couple of shots but the MOT the waist level was so insane that I thought it was just too it was just too hard and

1:33:47

then I they had the 40 megapixel Hasselblad and there was also a phase at

1:33:52

that time and I think I rented the phase and I shot with it as well as my 4 by 5

1:33:58

and then I did side by sides of that same subject I said aha Eureka the digital is better quality I get faster

1:34:06

shutter speeds better sharpness and so that’s the first time that digital

1:34:12

exceeded the quality I can get with film but it was from the helicopter though that was the deciding factor so I

1:34:19

started with the 40 and then the 50 came along and then the 60 came along and unlike my conventional film camera like

1:34:27

my four by five and my 8 by 10 and all the lenses I bought were you know they

1:34:32

almost increased in value over time and every time you buy one of these house of Ladd’s for $40,000 next year it’s 20 and

1:34:39

then the year after that it’s 10 you know so the kind of depreciation of digital as we all know is insane so yeah

1:34:45

but if you want to be at that edge you get the next one but they’re currently the current iteration is 100 megapixel

1:34:52

House of lines and now at the hunter it backs up at megapixel the thing that’s

1:34:57

now failing are their lenses so now you gotta get a whole new set of lenses because the lenses aren’t so you can see

1:35:04

the softness on the because

1:35:32

[Music]

1:35:45

[Music]

1:36:20

well it’s almost impossible because you were all implicated short of you know

1:36:26

and we all can’t do this either go and you know build a little log cabin and live off the fish in the fowl and you

1:36:33

know whatever else you can get out there and the grub in the woods it’s not that’s not gonna work for a point or

1:36:39

eight billion people so there there is the wait there is no way back there’s only a way forward and and so the I

1:36:46

think the only real thing that we can do is is is to try to do more of you know

1:36:55

be more behavior that as sustainable and less that is unsustainable and becoming more aware of the impacts of that we

1:37:03

each have as consumers and what are we consuming I mean I can’t help you no I mean when I’m going out there and

1:37:09

shooting you know I really occurred to me when I actually had to I was doing

1:37:15

some stuff way up in northern Kenya and we had to actually get trucks to move

1:37:21

the 45 drums of the jet a fuel for which

1:37:29

is more of a diesel for four choppers and and so we had four in two and a half hours you know we consume like to 45

1:37:38

gallon drums of being in the air so you really realize and what I do in all of

1:37:43

like if you look at all our our films and for all my shoots and all my chopper time I have research the best offsets

1:37:52

like the gold carbon offsets you can get which means they’re highly regulated and they’re making sure that you know that

1:38:00

amount of carbon is actually sequestered in in a way that wouldn’t have already

1:38:06

happened anyways so the the gold standard is this is a new sequestering so wind turbine would be considered if

1:38:14

it wasn’t already in the plans would sequester because it’s not putting co2

1:38:19

in the air and you know I think it’s a the first three years a wind turbine offsets all of its carbon to create the

1:38:26

metals and the parts and everything and after that the rest of its life is carbon free so

1:38:32

so you can kind of look at how your carbon footprint and I tend to do a double so whatever it is you know where

1:38:38

the offset I’ll then do it once more just as a buffer for what I’m doing

1:38:45

I mean if everybody offset their carbon there would be a huge industry of people

1:38:50

sequestering carbon in a gold standard so that could actually solve a problem

1:38:56

and because we until we find alternatives we there is not a choice so

1:39:03

right now for mobile for personal mobility if you don’t use the public transit you know you can do a you know a

1:39:10

diesel or gas or you can do a hybrid or you can do electric I just went to electric which now I would never ever go

1:39:16

back because it’s actually far sitting for me it’s a it’s a much more enjoyable experience than in a car and it’s

1:39:23

quieter and it’s it’s environmentally friendly but you know as we progress into this new world you know it’s it’s

1:39:32

going to be employ a lot of people but it’s also going to employ a lot of people in a new industry so so I think

1:39:39

we are in this paradigm shift almost in every industry that’s going on right now and so we are adapting to say this but

1:40:03

you get setbacks like self at the border of it and there’s putting that’s putting America back a decade or more which is

1:40:09

really at a bad time through you know it’s very unfortunate that it’s happening right now because the the time

1:40:15

that’s the window that we have is closing very rapidly I believe yes

1:40:49

[Music]

1:41:02

I’ll just mention it now yeah how do I

1:41:09

choose I feel mean now only one person okay okay this

1:41:28

well this is a real surrogate if you wanted to see what the Prince looked like go to the gallery but ya know there

1:41:38

is I mean I still do believe that it’s really important i I do all my work and I go through all this trouble so that

1:41:44

you can see it in a gallery I always see this as a kind of not fully satisfactory

1:41:51

you know I noticed the light you know it’s not a perfect it’s not a but but I did see by the way I was at the CES show

1:42:00

because I’m trying to find new technologies just recently in Vegas the new 8k they have an 8 they had an 8k I

1:42:06

couldn’t see it because it was such a top secret but I know some people have got to see it it’s an aka roll-up screen but it’s so

1:42:17

it’s now rollable an 8k and apparently it’s and I did see some other a.k

1:42:23

monitors and they’re almost as satisfying as the prints that you see at

1:42:29

the gallery they’re amazing can get right up to them you can’t see any matrix of that so that and the screen

1:42:37

technology and the projection technology is really coming along so for Kay’s great a Kay is amazing okay so I’m just

1:42:47

before you all go so the so I’m now I do a lot of collaborating now because the

1:42:52

scale at which I were and the places that I’m going and I’m involved in film and 3d and all of that so Jennifer

1:43:00

baseball nicked upon CA I’ve been working with them for over 12 years so one of the first films which was a film

1:43:06

following me around after I did China in 2005 so they followed me around with a

1:43:13

film camera month shoot and Peter Mettler was the camera operator for that

1:43:19

one month shoot and that that end up being a film called manufactured landscapes and it went off and still

1:43:26

gets shown a lot and went off and won many awards and it was a film basically

1:43:32

looking at the work that I did in China and also in Bangladesh and shipbreaking but extending the context into

1:43:39

the people who are part of this landscape who work here who lived there

1:43:45

and live off of that so that so that was a my first kind of foray into film with

1:43:53

them but I was more of the author and subject of the film and then we decided

1:43:58

to do watermark which is a film that you’ll be watching after this and

1:44:05

watermark is is that we co-directed at Jennifer and myself and what we did is we basically chose a lot of the subjects

1:44:12

and where and how and I was now getting more behind the camera particularly on

1:44:18

the work that was more akin to my work the big views the big drone shots the

1:44:23

big filmic things I was doing a fair amount of directing those and and

1:44:30

Jennifer was directing the the people on the ground and their stories and capturing their their voices and and and

1:44:39

their stories and that’s what kind of brought that together so now we’re just in the thick of now Nick Daponte her

1:44:47

partner and Jennifer and they just finished the film long time running on

1:44:52

Gordon Downey so they were they were directors on that so now we’re doing

1:44:59

Anthropocene as a film and we’re all directing it and we from the very beginning we started to collaborate as

1:45:06

to how are we going to and what subjects where are we going to go how are we going to frame this subject and you know

1:45:15

how are we going to tell that story so so that’s the current film that we’re working on so we continue and we see

1:45:22

this as a trilogy we kind of feel that this is and I also feel that this is now coming to a point where I’ve said many

1:45:29

things I’m not sure where I go after this but a lot of that subject around mining and quarries and deforestation

1:45:35

and agriculture and all that somehow I feel it’s you know I’m coming to some

1:45:41

kind of end point with a lot of those ideas and so I’m gonna have to continue

1:45:46

to work on how I reframe it I’m also looking at new technology that’s one of the breakouts so you saw a little bit of

1:45:52

work in 3d and other ways of telling that narrative so watermark again was a distributed in 50

1:45:59

odd ended up being a very successful film that won a lot of awards again and was distributed in 15 countries and it

1:46:06

basically is looking at our relationship to water and a very kind of you know you

1:46:12

know macro view of it of how we see it both as a something for survival and

1:46:20

something that’s spiritual and something that is used in industry so it’s a kind

1:46:26

of exploration a very kind of we try to give our relationship to water in a way

1:46:31

without you know without putting too much opinion on it we were giving our

1:46:38

relationship to water a very complex background and one of the things we say

1:46:43

is we’re giving the subject the complexity it deserves there isn’t a simple way to understand the right and

1:46:50

the wrong and what we’re doing but but but through the film we’re able to make

1:46:56

you really consider that thing that we take for granted every day is something very very important and very special and

1:47:03

and life-defining and so in in the manufactured landscapes after that film one of the things that

1:47:10

we had hoped that that film would achieve was at you know at the end of

1:47:15

that film every time you pick up something that says Made in China you would some there would be another

1:47:22

something that would register oh yeah China I saw that film of how these things are manufactured to scale of

1:47:28

what’s going on in China so that somehow it hadn’t formed what made in China actually put some images into your mind

1:47:34

of what that kind of looks like and with watermark our hope was that you know the

1:47:40

next time you turn on a tap or the next time you jump into a fresh lake of water

1:47:45

or into pool you have another kind of respect and and and feeling of the

1:47:51

importance of that precious liquid that all life comes from so so it’s just

1:47:57

trying to build a sense of of the respect that we need to treat it as and so hoping with that

1:48:05

respect is we’re less likely to defile it or be more vigilant when somebody

1:48:11

else is fouling it and to to make sure that that they don’t get away with it that this is this is not just for for

1:48:19

today but it’s for the future as well so that’s one of our aspirations of watermark so thank you very much

1:48:25

[Applause]

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