Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky (born February 22, 1955) is a Canadian photographer and artist known for his large format photographs of industrial landscapes.

His works depict locations from around the world that represent the increasing development of industrialization and its impacts on nature and the human existence.

It is most often connected to the philosophical concept of the sublime, a trait established by the grand scale of the work he creates, though they are equally disturbing in the way they reveal the context of rapid industrialization.

From the mid-1970s to early 1980s, Burtynsky formally studied graphic arts and photography.

He obtained a diploma in graphic design from Niagara College in Welland, Ontario, beginning his studies in 1974.

After receiving his collegial diploma, he had not initially considered pursuing higher education, but quickly changed his mind when touring the Ryerson campus on a request from a former photography teacher of his.

Some of his earliest original landscape photographs such as Landscape Study #1, North Carolina, USA (1979) and Landscape Study #2, Ontario, Canada (1981) served as portfolio submissions for Ryerson and displayed traces of his early exploration into the main themes of his work: human control over nature.

He enrolled and completed the four-year undergraduate program and obtained a Bachelor's in Photographic Arts (Media Studies Program) from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto, Ontario, in 1982.

Burtynsky's earliest works, now donated to Ryerson University's Image Center are primarily taken in locations across Ontario and Western Canada.

Influenced by American photographers such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Carleton Watkins, these works consist mostly of colored landscapes.

Some of Burtynsky's breakout works post-graduation such as Breaking Ground: Mines, Railcuts and Homesteads (1983–85) and Vermont Quarries (1991-92) show a decisive transition toward the human impact themes that mark his later work.

In many of these indicate an honest account of the ecology of human interaction and the pillaging of landscapes which include the dialogue between the human, machine and the earth.

Burtynsky briefly worked in photography departments for IBM and the Ontario Hospital Association peri-graduation and in architecture post-graduation until in 1985, he founded Toronto Image Works, a studio space that doubled as a darkroom rental facility, custom photo laboratory and training center for digital and new media.

In 2003, Burtynsky developed a series of images conveying China's contemporary transformation into industrialization which was included as part of the exhibit.

Using a 4×5 large format camera he presented the result of Western consumerism on the industrialization of China while depicting the effects of the environmental devastation caused by Chinese industrial ambitions in China.

Burtynsky photographs sweeping views of landscapes altered by industry: mine tailings, quarries, scrap piles.

The grandeur of his images is often in tension with the compromised environments they depict.

He has made several excursions to China to photograph that country's industrial emergence, and construction of one of the world's largest engineering projects, the Three Gorges Dam.

Burtynsky is the inaugural winner of the TED Prize for Innovation and Global Thinking in 2005.

Most of Burtynsky's exhibited photography (pre 2007) was taken with a large format, field camera, on large 4×5-inch sheet film and developed into high-resolution, large-dimension prints of various sizes and editions ranging from 18 × 22 inches to 60 × 80 inches.

He often positions himself at high-vantage points over the landscape using elevated platforms, the natural topography, and more currently drones, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.

Burtynsky describes the act of taking a photograph in terms of "The Contemplated Moment", evoking and in contrast to, "The Decisive Moment" of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

He currently uses a high-resolution digital medium format camera.

Burtynsky's photographic style is characterized by the sublime nature of the scale of his photographs.

His large-format view camera depicts humanity's scarring on the landscapes he makes his subject, with "astonishing color and relentless detail", always focusing on the consequences of global consumerism.

Burtynsky's photography places the viewer in a state of non-intervention with the environments depicted.

While the viewer witnesses the consequences of radicalized consumerism, the viewer is left to quietly contemplate its political articulation: neither a condemnation nor a celebration of the subject matter, simply an acknowledgement of its existence, to create dialogue, not to dichotomize.

Manufactured Landscapes is a collection of more than 60 large scale images, many as large as 48 by 60 inches, depicting Burtynsky's travels around the world capturing stunning transformations of nature into industrial landscapes.

In 2016 he was the receiver of the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts for his collection of works thus far.

Burtynsky is an advocate for environmental conservationism and his work is deeply entwined in his advocacy.

His work comments on the scars left by industrial capitalism while establishing an aesthetic for environmental devastation, the sublime-horrors discussed in a number of essays on the topic of his work.

He sits on the board of Contact, Toronto's international festival of photography.

Burtynsky was born in St. Catharines, Ontario, a blue-collar town where General Motors was the largest employer.

His Father, Peter Burtynsky, was a Ukrainian immigrant who found work on the production line at the General Motors plant.

When Burtynsky was 11 years old, his father purchased a darkroom and cameras from a widow whose late husband had practiced amateur photography.

Burtynsky was given two rolls of Tri-X film and told to make do with that or support the habit through his own means.

Along with learning black and white photography, he learned black and white print.

This would prove to be useful in the development of his own business to support his new-found habit as he began photographing events and providing portraits at his local Ukrainian community center, charging 50 cents per photograph.

With the money he made, he travelled throughout the countryside of St. Catharines photographing the "pristine landscapes" of his childhood.

This is where he would later attribute his interest in pursuing landscape photography.