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THIS IS AN ARCHIVED WEBSITE AND NO LONGER ACTIVE
For up-to-date info see: robertburley.com

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT THE BOOK


Robert Burley interviewed on CBC Metro Morning with Matt Galloway
"An Enduring Wilderness", May 9th, 2017
Duration: 6:42
LISTEN HERE

“ Robert Burley's engagement and catalyzing direction enable a series of perspectives on green spaces in Toronto, and orchestrate a potential aesthetic that recaptures the place these spaces once held in Toronto.”
John K. Grande, Border Crossings Magazine

"a genuinely significant and timeless book"
John Stilgoe, Landscape Historian, Harvard University

"Eschewing the pastoral fantasies of the Canadian wilderness, Burley’s urban lens captures a refreshing jolt of reality. The vistas unfold with uncomplicated grace, acknowledging the moments where daily life meets the sublime. There are untouched landscapes too, of course, but what makes the book so compelling is Burley’s understanding of the city itself as a part of nature."
Stefan Novakovic, Canadian Architect

"an incredible visual tour that brings to life the strange juxtapositions between urban and rustic that characterize Toronto"
Alex Bozikovic, Globe and Mail

"An Enduring Wilderness: Toronto’s Natural Parklands, brilliantly reveals a city you’ll want to know better" Shawn Micallef, Toronto Star

"This book is not only a beautiful offering, but it also provides an important reminder that we live with nature, and it is always finding ways to tell us it is here." Spacing Magazine

“This highly personal, harmonic effort forces you to reconsider what a park is, and in doing so will forever change the way you see the city that you thought you knew.”
Charles A. Birnbaum, The Cultural Landscape Foundation

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“The ravines are to Toronto what canals are to Venice and hills are to San Francisco. They are the heart of the city’s emotional geography…” Robert Fulford

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About the Project

Over a four-year period (2012-16), Robert Burley explored and photographed the complex relationship between Toronto’s natural parklands and urban life at a pivotal time in the city's history. The outcomes of this project included:

A visual book (ECW Press 2017) interpreting one of the most extensive urban park systems in the world. Burley's photographs are augmented with selections of poetry and prose by some of Toronto s best-known writers and this publication also includes a history and appendix which provides an important reference for those wanting to better understand one of Toronto's most defining features.

An institutional online image archive held at The City of Toronto Archives.

A Primary Exhibition that was part of the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, 2017 Edition.

the-book

The Book

RELEASE DATE: MAY 9th, 2017

Commissioned by the City of Toronto, and released in Canada’s sesquicentennial year, this rich and handsomely produced book brings together breathtaking views of the Scarborough Bluffs, the deep ravines that cut through the heart of the city, and the densely wooded trails in the Carolinian forests of the Rouge Valley, part of Canada’s first and only national urban park. Burley’s photographs, complemented by selections of poetry and prose written by celebrated Canadian writers, infuse these sometimes hidden and mysterious places with meaning and contextualize their importance to civic life.

BUY THE BOOK ON AMAZON

BUY THE LIMITED EDITION BOOK + PRINT at The Stephen Bulger Gallery

Foreward by Mayor John Tory
Introduction by Jennifer Keesmaat and Janie Romoff
Essay by Robert Burley

With writing by:
Anne Michaels
Alissa York
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Michael Mitchell
George Elliot Clarke
Wayne Reeves
Jane Weninger

ECW Press, Toronto     
Release date: May 9th, 2017
264 Pages
Hardcover 9 x 12 inches

photographs
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SHORELINE: The Lake Ontario Waterfront

Slip between the quiet houses, dart among the trees. The trail follows the stream, the stream cuts through the ravine, the ravine cuts through the bluffs, descending through a core sample of Toronto geology, a core sample of memory, to the lake.

Anne Michaels, from Please, Birds!

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RIVER: The Humber River Valley

We swing around a river bend, and the city vanishes behind the high, forested banks.
It’s as if three million people have gone totally missing. We are traveling in the 400-year-
old footsteps of Étienne Brûlé.

Michael Mitchell, from Petting the Bunny

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VALLEY: The Don River Valley

Standing in my kitchen, I turned over card after beautiful card. Down in the Don Valley, one child wrote, I saw a river going the way it wanted. Down in the Don Valley, wrote another, I felt like a bird.

Alissa York, from The Animal Part

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CREEKS and lost rivers

This river is lucky because it is not one of the dead. Erased is better than dead and opaque is better than erased. It is not rerouted into a culvert. It is not diverted into a sewer. Its life merges into the Kobechenonk, where it should….

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, from Life by Water

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FOREST: Highland Creek and Rouge River Valleys

we ramble among bush-brandished, blue berries
that’ll succour birds when bugs disappear,
come blear, withering November,
when snowflakes—
wet lace—
hang white Victorian curtains.

George Elliott Clarke, from Navigating the Rouge (Park[s])

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links

About Robert Burley

As an artist working in photography, Robert Burley has sought to describe and interpret the built environment in which he lives. Burley’s works have been exhibited around the globe, and can be found in museum collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Musée de l’Elysée, George Eastman Museum, FoMu, Art Gallery of Ontario and Musée Niepce.

His work often explores the transition between city and country and over a forty year career, he has undertaken numerous urban landscape projects including explorations of Toronto’s Don Valley, Chicago's O'Hare Airfield and, as part of the larger commission Viewing Olmsted, New York City's Central Park.

His other publications include Viewing Olmsted: Photographs by Robert Burley, Lee Friedlander and Geoffrey James (1996) and The Disappearance of Darkness: Photography at the End of the Analog Era (2012). Burley currently lives in Toronto and teaches at The School of Image Arts, Ryerson University.

ARTIST WEBSITE

ARTIST GALLERY REPRESENTATION

City of Toronto Parkland Initiatives

This project was a commission from the City of Toronto Planning and Parks, Forestry and Recreation Divisions and is in part, related to many City initiatives such as the Ravine Strategy, the designation of 86 new biodiversity areas called Environmentally Significant Areas (ESA's) and the establishment of the Rouge as Canada's first and only urban national park.