Quotes from Edward Burtynsky

When I look at green trees on a sunny day, I don't know how to make an interesting picture of that.

I love the tones of browns and grays - I love more neutral tones. That's why I like going to the desert and working in the desert. I find that green trees and things like that have a tendency to lock us into a certain way of seeing.

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

If you look at photojournalism, it's largely driven by current events... always chasing a crisis or disaster. I follow a narrative that is much looser than current events.

No water equals no life. We can have no oil; it's fine. No water - there is no plan b with no water.

Like all animals, human beings have always taken what they want from nature. But we are the rogue species. We are unique in our ability to use resources on a scale and at a speed that our fellow species can't.

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

I'm working in this very complex set of issues having to do with who we are as a species and how much we can do to the Earth before it starts to buckle under. My work can easily read as an indictment, but I don't see it as that simple a problem.

Water, like many other resources, is harvested, transported and used throughout all aspects of society. Unlike other resources, water is critical to the survival of all forms of life. The underlying question that sits at the core of my exploration is to what degree can we shape water before it begins to shape us.

In our ephemeral information age, people think we've left behind the stone, bronze, and iron ages. But they're all still going on - we use tonnes of this stuff every day. You just have to look.

I wish I could create an IMAX film that would make my work accessible to a broader audience.

Somebody referred to what I do as subliminal activism, which I like.

To me, Los Angeles was the invention of the suburb. They figured it out and perfected it and created a city that was dependent on the automobile.