![\"The-power-of-water1\"](\"http:\/\/www.cawater-info.net\/all_about_water\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/The-power-of-water1.jpg\")
<\/a>Pivot Irrigation #11, High Plains, Texas Panhandle, USA, 2011.<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cThere is a fundamental flaw in democracy, where career politicians vie for power in the next election and long-term thinking has somehow disappeared,\u201d he told me last week. \u201cThe only chance we have is that we elect more people who are capable of making difficult changes. If we allow the people with special interests, whether that\u2019s big pharma, big oil or big agra, to shape all the policies to their own benefit and not for the long-term survival of our species, then we\u2019ve created our own bed. We\u2019re allowing this to happen; we need to stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the past few decades, Burtynsky\u2019s work has regularly considered the impact of man on the natural world, presenting beautiful, stark imagery that takes a step back from the immediate to provide a breathtaking, disconcerting look at what we\u2019re doing to our world. Watermark, directed by Jennifer Baichwal and five years in the making, focuses on our relationship to water \u2014 how we use it and abuse it, and how our desperate need of it shapes the world around us. He shows the state of the once-torrential Colorado River, now a barren desert delta. Also here, the vast, manmade, floating abalone farms off China\u2019s Fujian coast. Then there are the shots of the Kumbh Mela festival in India, where millions of pilgrims gather to bathe in the Ganges, or the astonishing images of captured, constrained water at the Xiaolangdi Dam in China.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy work is not about providing answers,\u201d says Burtynsky firmly. \u201cBut it brings many questions to bear about what we\u2019re doing to our landscape to provide for growing populations and cities.\u201d Here, take a look at a clip from the film Burtynsky showed at TED2014, and at some of the project\u2019s extraordinary images (click on a thumbnail to launch the gallery).<\/p>\n
<\/a>Stepwell #3, Chand Baori, Abhaneri, Rajasthan, India, 2010.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Kumbh Mela #3, Allahabad, India, 2013.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>VeronaWalk, Naples, Florida, USA, 2012.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>Colorado River Delta #2, Near San Felipe, Baja, Mexico, 2011.<\/p><\/div>\n