Burtynsky’s photographs deserve a closer look

At first glance, it’s a line of alien robots, but Edward Burtynsky’s photographs merit a much closer look – this is actually looking down an open cast mine in India

It’s nine years since I mentioned the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, whose astounding images focus on massive landscapes and objects. The post was prompted by seeing one of his photographs on the front cover of Canadian magazine Walrus. Now, art collecting website Artsy has set up a page devoted to Burtynsky, with 75 of his images.

Walrus put a Burtynsky landscape on its 10th anniversary cover in 2013:

Walrus, October 2013: water by Edward Burtynsky

Here is the Walrus cover that first attracted my attention:

July 2007 cover of Walrus magazine with Edward Burtynsky warning of development destroying Canada’s wilderness

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Colour pin-ups – in 1867

Stef Penney’s ‘Tenderness of Wolves’ prompts a query in its description of a Hudson Bay Company outpost in the outback of Canada. In one room, ‘Pinned to the walls are coloured pictures of race-horses and prizefighters, cut from magazines.’ Colour pin-ups? In 1867? Sounds a tad early, I said to myself, as I sat on a jet back from Spain. However, probably not. The Illustrated London News began printing its colour Christmas plates in 1855. And David Reed (‘The Popular Magazine’) discusses colour being used for promotions as ‘a common event’ by 1871 among US magazines.

Magazines timeline

Eye-catching

Best cover I’ve seen this week in Canada goes to the June issue of French magazine Philosophie, which has a girl with beetles for eyes! Looking at the back issues, it does a good line in surreal covers.

A better Daily Grind

This posting again comes from Halifax in canada, where I’ve just come in from The Daily Grind. In this case, that’s a big news agent with a coffee shop at the back, a book shop next door and a pub above.

Among my reading is Macleans – a Canadian news weekly from Rogers, the country’s biggest magazine publisher – and The Walrus, which looks just like The New Yorker.

The cover story on Macleans  is about trying to forecast the end of the Harry Potter series (Will Harry Die?). The story that caught my eye was that of a soldier, Chris Karigiannis,  who had written in to praise a wistful-looking girl on a recent cover of the magazine but had been killed in Afghanistan.