Edward Burtynsky

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Edward Burtynsky in 2005

Edward Burtynsky, OC is a Canadian photographer and artist.

Born in 1955 in St. Catharines, Ontario, he studied at the Ryerson Polytechnic University, where he obtained a B.A. in photographic arts, and at the Niagara College, where he obtained a diploma in graphic arts. His work appears in a number of museums, corporate collections, and books.

Burtynsky's most famous photographs are sweeping views of industrially scarred or altered landscapes: mine tailings, quarries, scrap piles. He was invited to China to photograph the construction of the Three Gorges Dam project. The grand, inspiring beauty of these images is often in tension with the troubled environments they depict.

In 2006, Burtynsky was the subject of an award-winning documentary film, Manufactured Landscapes, which was shown at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. [1] In April of the same year, he was named Officer of the Order of Canada.

Burtynsky currently chairs the board of directors of the acclaimed online sustainability magazine, Worldchanging.

[edit] Selected bibliography

Edward Burtynsky: China. Essays by Ted Fishman, Mark Kingwell, Marc Mayer, and the artist, and a preface by Maurice Strong. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl. 2005. ISBN 978-3865211309.
Pauli, Lori. Manufactured Landscapes: The Photographs of Edward Burtynsky. Essays by Mark Haworth-Booth and Kenneth Baker. Ottawa, Canada: National Gallery of Canada, in association with Yale University Press, New Haven and London. 2003. ISBN 0-300-09943-6.
Before the Flood. Essay by Gary Michael Dault. 2003