Synopses & Reviews
Over a twenty-five year career exploring the landscape as transformed by industry, the celebrated Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has accumulated a body of work on large scale quarries around the world. Including Canada, Italy, China, Spain, Portugal, India and America these thought provoking studies of sites that are created as we dig into the earth for material in order to build our cities, urge us to consider how we as viewers are simultaneously attracted yet repulsed by these landscapes - somewhere a building is created while a landscape is destroyed.
Awards
Synopsis
After some 25 years of exploring the impact of industry on our planet, the celebrated Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has accumulated a substantial body of work documenting the world's major quarries--in Canada, Italy, China, Spain, Portugal, India and America. Quarries are, of course, a crucial source for the buildings we construct, and as such, a negative correlative of what we add to the world--as well as a tangible (and neglected) evidence for our ongoing dependence on its resources. Somewhere a building is being created while a landscape is being destroyed, and, as Burtynsky writes, quarries are places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis. His images of these plundered landscapes are simultaneously beautiful and disquieting.