Edward Burtynsky creates disarmingly beautiful photographs of industrial landscapes. Charting man’s relationship with nature, he uncovers an uncomfortable reality. In Burtynsky’s world, mountains are composed of industrial detritus, oceans are flooded with metal waste and caves replaced by onstrous quarries. His large-scale color photographs lure us inside the most destructive mining, quarrying, manufacturing, shipping and oil operations shaping the earth today. At once challenging and beguiling, Burtynsky’s landscapes seduce the viewer with vivid detail and unexpected color.

Born in 1955 in St. Catharines, Ontario, Burtynsky studied photography at Ryerson University, Toronto. His early works were intimate explorations of Canada’s unspoiled landscapes. By the late 1980s, however, he turned away from the quickly disappearing natural terrain. Instead, he drew inspiration from his experience in the mining and automobile industries. Today, Burtynsky continues to investigate various industrial incursions into landscapes. Taking photographs across the globe, he forges a powerful dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear, desire and restraint.

Edward Burtynsky’s works are in the collections of more than fifty museums across the globe, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Burtynsky’s distinctions include the TED Prize, the Outreach Award at the Rencontres d’Arles and the Applied Arts Magazine book award. He lives and works in Toronto, Canada.