Additional Images

Provenance:

Art Mûr, Montreal, QC
Important Corporate Collection, Toronto, ON

Note:

From the “Mines and Tailings” series, Nickel Tailings #34 mimics the natural world, but the scene is entirely a result of human intervention. How do we reconcile the great beauty of this photograph with the environmental price paid?

Burtynsky has said that early in his career, he “started thinking about ruins and the kinds of emotions they provoke. Throughout art history, the ruin has been a subject of contemplation, of something melancholy and monumental. I think a lot of what I photograph are the ruins of our society, the ruins in the landscape, the things that are left behind.”[1]

In the Renaissance, artists and viewers were drawn to Greco-Roman ruins, seeking to form a connection with the monuments of a once-great culture. Burtynsky presents us with a more angst-filled vista: rather than romantic views of civilizations ravaged by time, Burtynsky asks us to look at the civilization doing the ravaging. Burtynsky depicts not the great achievements of our age, but rather that which facilitates our greatness.

Through Burtynsky’s lens, places that were not supposed to be spaces of reflection are allowed to serve as such. Burtynsky notes that his work “function[s] as reflecting pools of our times,”[2] allowing the viewer to arbitrate where these pictures sit on a scale between grandeur and entropy.

[1] Michael Torosian, “The Essential Element: An Interview with Edward Burtynsky” in Manufactured Landscapes, ed. Lori Pauli (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2003), 48.
[2] Edward Burtynsky, “Statement,” accessed September 2024, https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/about/statement.