{"id":18056,"date":"2011-02-15T15:55:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-15T15:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amateurphotographer.co.uk\/uncategorized\/edward-burtynsky-iconic-photographer-18056"},"modified":"2014-09-02T15:50:52","modified_gmt":"2014-09-02T14:50:52","slug":"edward-burtynsky-iconic-photographer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/other.kelsey.host\/amateurphotographer\/technique\/edward-burtynsky-iconic-photographer\/","title":{"rendered":"Edward Burtynsky – Iconic Photographer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Image: Edward Burtynsky on location. His book, Burtynsky: Oil, won the prestigious Kraszna-Krausz Book Award in 2010. \u00a9 Edward Burtynsky. Courtesy Nicholas Metivier. Toronto<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Edward Burtynsky is both a passionate advocate for the environment and one of the most acclaimed fine-art photographers working today. Using 5x4in equipment to produce large-scale images, Burtynsky documents \u2018manufactured\u2019 landscapes created by humankind\u2019s ceaseless drive for progress. <\/p>\n

His images of locations such as oil refineries, quarries, factories, and refuse and recycling plants are stark and coolly observed, yet carry a powerful environmental message. He focuses on the products, resources and materials we use, what we do with them and what happens when they reach the end of their life span. <\/p>\n

Burtynsky was born in Ontario, Canada, in 1955, to Ukrainian \u00e9migr\u00e9 parents. His father worked at the local General Motors plant and Burtynsky developed an interest in industry at an early age. His father also encouraged Edward\u2019s passion for photography by buying a second-hand set of cameras, lenses and darkroom equipment, and helping his son shoot and print his own work. <\/p>\n

In his teens, Burtynsky worked as a printer before studying graphic arts and photography at college. He graduated in 1982 with a Batchelor of Applied Arts in photographic arts from Ryerson University in Toronto.<\/p>\n

Influenced in his formative years by the work of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, Burtynsky chose to use large-format equipment to attain a high degree of clarity and detail in his images. However, instead of presenting an idealised vision of the beauty and grandeur of nature, Burtynsky used the 5x4in format to focus on how nature had been compromised and subjugated by human activity. His first two series of images, titled \u2018Mines\u2019 and \u2018Homesteads\u2019, were shot between 1983 and 1985.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Mines\u2019 project in particular established Burtynsky\u2019s style, subject matter and themes, showing vast areas of land that had been excavated for open-cast copper and coal mining. These landscapes are usually shot in overcast conditions, without dramatic lighting or obviously emotive content, and leave viewers to form their own opinions about what they are seeing. What\u2019s immediately striking about these images, particularly in Burtynsky\u2019s large prints (typically up to 60x50in), is the sheer size of the landscape that\u2019s been plundered. <\/p>\n

<\/img>Image: Oxford Tyre Pile, Westley, California, USA, 1999. In the late \u201990s Burtynsky began to focus on waste. \u00a9 Edward Burtynsky. Courtesy Nicholas Metivier. Toronto<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018The one operating principle in my work is scale,\u2019 Burtynsky told me in 2009. \u2018Human beings taking things from nature to provide for themselves is not new, but the scale is. So if I wanted to photograph a quarry, I\u2019d look for the biggest to show the gigantic proportions of what we take from the land.\u2019<\/p>\n

In 1985, Burtynsky established the Toronto Image Works, which has gone on to become a darkroom rental facility, a digital imaging centre, a new media training centre and gallery space. At the same time he continued with his own environmentally focused photographic work, with projects including \u2018Railcuts\u2019 (1985) and his first series of quarries (1991-92).<\/p>\n

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Burtynsky\u2019s focus moved from the effects of gathering raw materials and industrialisation to include the waste produced at the end of a product\u2019s life. He photographed mountains of used tyres and oil drums, and the wastelands created around the ship-breaking and ship-recycling industries.<\/p>\n

Many of Burtynsky\u2019s themes were drawn together in a three-year project on China, which was published in book form in 2005. Over a number of visits, Burtynsky documented the effects of China\u2019s rapid industrialisation, including the Three Gorges Dam project that involved the creation of the world\u2019s largest hydroelectric dam. <\/p>\n

As in the rest of his work, his China project concentrates mainly on the material world. When people are included in the images, it will be either as identically clothed, regimented and almost dehumanised members of the industrial workforce or impotent bystanders dwarfed by the scale of the changes being forced upon them.<\/p>\n

In recent years, Burtynsky has focused the oil industry because, he said, \u2018It occurred to me that all the vast, man-altered landscapes I\u2019d been in pursuit of for over 20 years were all possible because of the discovery of oil and the mechanical advantage of the internal combustion engine.\u2019 <\/p>\n

The results of this ten-year project \u2013 documentary images of oil extraction, consumption and disposal, and the environmental effects of our economic dependence on this resource \u2013 were exhibited internationally and published as Burtynsky: Oil in 2008. This work was given a devastating postscript in 2010 when Burtynsky made a series of photographs of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Again, he avoided close-ups of stricken wildlife or polluted beaches and photographed the unfolding tragedy from a distant aerial perspective to emphasise its magnitude.<\/p>\n

<\/img>Image: Highway 1, Los Angeles, California, 2003. Burtynsky uses large-format equipment to achieve a high degree of clarity and detail. Edward Burtynsky. \u00a9 Courtesy Nicholas Metivier. Toronto<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

As industry rapidly develops around the world, Burtynsky will not be short of subjects while continuing to explore the contradiction between our need for raw materials and our concern for the world\u2019s future. <\/p>\n

His photographic mission is clear. \u2018I try to find subjects that are visually compelling and tweak people\u2019s sense of wonder,\u2019 he told me. \u2018I want people to stop and ask questions about that subject or place \u2013 to think about what they are looking at, where it is, how it got there and why it is being shown. I want to get people to think about their world a little more through the things I photograph.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Biography<\/h2>\n