Edward Burtynsky

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Edward Burtynsky in 2005

Edward Burtynsky OC is a Canadian photographer and artist.

Born of Ukrainian hertiage in 1955 in St. Catharines, Ontario, he studied at the Ryerson Polytechnic Institute, where he graduated from the Photographic Arts / Media Studies program with a Bachelor of Applied Arts, and at Niagara College, where he obtained a diploma in graphic arts. His works are housed in over fifty museums worldwide, numerous corporate collections, and books.

Burtynsky's most famous photographs are sweeping views of landscapes altered by industry: mine tailings, quarries, scrap piles. The grand, awe-inspiring beauty of his images is often in tension with the compromised environments they depict. He has made several excusions to China to photograph that country's industrial emergence, and construction of one of the world's largest engineering projects, the Three Gorges Dam.

In 2006, Burtynsky was the subject of the internationally acclaimed, award-winning documentary film, Manufactured Landscapes, that 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 is also the recipient of three honorary doctorates, and the esteemed TED prize.

In Fall 2009, acclaimed German photobook publisher Steidl published Burtynsky's fourth book, Burtynsky: Oil, as part of its Steidl/Corcoran imprint. The book features 12 years of imagery on the politically-charged subject of oil, chronicling its extraction from the earth, its use, and its increasing scarcity. The book accompanies a Corcoran Gallery of Art exhibition of the same name, on view at the Washington, D.C. museum from October 3 through December 13, 2009.

Burtynsky currently chairs the board of directors of the high profile online sustainability magazine Worldchanging, and sits on the board of CONTACT, Toronto's international festival of photography.

[edit] Selected bibliography

Edward Burtynsky: Oil. Essays by Paul Roth, Michael Mitchell, and William E. Rees. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl/Corcoran. 2009. ISBN 978-3-86521-9435.
Edward Burtynsky: Quarries. Essay by Michael Mitchell, Göttingen, Germany: Steidl. 2007. ISBN 978-3-86521-456-0 (Deutscher Fotobuch Preis 2008)
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