Our trip in New York Part 2 of 2
- Diamond Zhou
- Aug 8
- 6 min read
welcome to our
SATURDAY EVENING POST
August 9th, 2025
Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration at
International Center of Photography
It was deeply significant to experience Edward Burtynsky’s exhibition at ICP. The works offered us not only a deeper understanding of his vision, but also an invitation to reflect on our own roles as human beings on this planet we call home, and the profound imprint we leave upon it. Many of the subjects he captures are only visible in their full scope from an aerial perspective, yet through his lens they become both immediate and undeniable.
In their quiet power, the photographs made us think of the work of Ansel Adams, not in subject matter, but in the deep commitment, mastery, and clarity each image contains. Burtynsky’s works, like Adams’s, hold within them a spirit, a vitality, and a dignity that make the landscapes themselves feel animate. They are at once documents and elegies, contained within them both the urgency of the present and the timelessness of the earth’s forms. To stand before them was to witness the planet made tangible through art, and to leave with one’s vision and conscience transformed.
ICP writes: “The Great Acceleration, the first solo institutional exhibition of world-renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky’s work in New York City in over twenty years, reveals the depth of Burtynsky's investigation into the human alteration of natural landscapes around the world, showing their present fragility and enduring beauty in equal measure.” The Great Acceleration is an established term used to describe the rapid rise of human impact on our planet according to a range of measures, among them population growth, water usage, transportation, greenhouse gas emissions, resource extraction and food production, each of which Burtynsky has photographed the outward signs of at length and in great detail over the past forty years. From open pit mines across North America to oil derricks in Azerbaijan, from rice terraces in China to oil bunkering in Nigeria, Burtynsky has travelled across the world and back again as part of his restless and seemingly inexhaustible drive to discover the ways, both old and new, that organized human activity has transformed the natural world. Though already unified by both the precision and formal beauty that Burtynsky deploys to create each photograph, The Great Acceleration further underscores that, like their respective subjects, each project remains fundamentally interconnected.”
Robert Kelly Studio and Home Visit
This was our first visit to Robert Kelly in New York, an occasion long anticipated. His studio and home are joined, an expansive loft in the Bowery that feels at once industrious and deeply personal, the kind of space where art and life intermingle without boundaries. It bears the unmistakable workmanship of the artist himself, not only in his works that are ubiquitous throughout his home, but in the quiet beauty of every chosen object.
In many ways, it is a contemporary trading post, rich with small works Robert has collected over the years from artists he admires, each a source of inspiration that continues to feed his own practice. Alongside them are objects that speak directly to the language of his paintings. Books, too, are everywhere: climbing the height of wall-to-wall shelves, forming architectural partitions, or leaning in casual stacks. Like the artworks, they are touchstones, repositories of stories, story of lines, of shapes, and shapes of desire, that filter into his work in subtle and unexpected ways.
Robert also collects posters, manuscripts, and assorted ephemera. These often find their way into his paintings, though not as mere background. Instead, they form the first underlayer, the only explicitly “textural” element in his compositions. In his more recent work, these materials are rarely worked face up; instead, he lays them face down, allowing only the faint ink impressions that seep through the paper’s reverse to surface. They emerge as a ghostly presence, monochromatic traces of histories now half-forgotten. The once grand announcement of a play, a letter’s private confession, a fragment of narrative. Stripped of their original context, they are reimagined and reborn as integral parts of something wholly new.
Robert himself is warm, humorous, and if I may say so, every bit as handsome as his photographs suggest. The camera, in this case, does not deceive. His industriousness is matched by a mind ceaselessly engaged with the possibilities and philosophies of his work. And then there is the unexpected charm of his studio visitor, a possibly third-generation pet squirrel, who was splayed out on the bench on the hot humid day we visited, in the small yard just beyond the studio door.
In Robert’s world, nothing is incidental. Every object, every scrap of paper, every thread of conversation is part of a larger continuum, one in which art is not simply made, but lived.
Robert Murray and Family Visit with Jonathan
Lippincott in Pennsylvania
One of the most memorable visits of our trip was to the home and studio of Robert and Cintra Murray, known simply and affectionately, as “the farm.” Jonathan Lippincott accompanied us on this journey. The son of the founders of the Lippincott factory, which produced some of the most monumental sculptures of the twentieth century, Jonathan is himself an accomplished writer and the author of the definitive book on Robert Murray. His deep familiarity with the Murray family, Robert’s studio, and his practice made him an ideal companion, the kind of guide who seems to know not only the facts but the soul of the place.
The farm lies in the rolling countryside of Pennsylvania, its landscape quietly steeped in history, the kind of place where the past feels ready to rise through the soil. The air there has a different register, it is silent yet resonant, alive with the layered music of birdsong and rustling leaves, unbroken by the low hum of the city. It is the kind of quiet that feels full and alive.
We stayed in “The Big House,” a gracious home surrounded by a flourishing garden planted by their daughter Claire, who joined us on our final day. Inside, the rooms tended with devotion by Hillary, another of Bob and Cintra’s daughters, held the accumulated history of the family: trinkets, photographs, well-thumbed books, and the kind of objects that seem to carry the warmth of all who have touched them. There was a sense of life fully lived here, of joy, hospitality, and the comings and goings of remarkable friends and visitors. The spirit of the surrounding region noted by foxhunting, dressage, and polo still lingered in the details of the house.
In contrast, Robert’s sculptures stand apart from the pastoral scene. They are robust, minimal, and exacting in form, monuments to clarity of vision. Yet somehow, in this setting, their boldness seems not at odds with the landscape, but in conversation with it, the weight and presence of his work meeting the openness and fluidity of the field and the endless lushness of the foliage.
Hillary, accomplished in the arts herself, and Cintra were our guides throughout the weekend. Their knowledge was encyclopaedic, they shared it with genuine warmth and generosity, opening not just their home but their lives. The days were punctuated by extraordinary meals, prepared by Hillary and Cintra as if they had been cooking for us all day, though somehow without missing a moment of conversation. These were truly farm-to-table feasts, fresh, flavourful, and made with the kind of care that makes you feel as though you have been folded into a family.
It was, in every way, a visit marked by generosity of spirit, of knowledge, and of beauty. To be in a place like this with this family, was to be reminded that art is not only in the studio or the gallery, but also in the way a home is kept, a garden is tended, and a table is set for friends.
Our habit of taking photos
UPCOMING EXHIBITION
GROUP EXHIBITION
Opens Wednesday, August 20th
Look forward to our invitation for the opening reception
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Watch TONY ROBINS’ artist talk on his solo exhibition, FLOWERS OF RESISTANCE:
