Edward Burtynsky b.1955

Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto

Private Collection, Toronto

This work has not been examined out of the frame but appears to be in pristine condition.
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The great power of industries like mining, smelting, and refining and of nature's equally great insistence on gravity, balance, and reclamation are pitched directly at each other in Burtynsky's dramatic and provocative photographs. In his work Burtynsky poses difficult questions: is this great industrial benefit worth this much environmental destruction, is this much mechanization worth this much dehumanizing work, are the changes humans have wrought on the planet supportable or are they ultimately destructive? Burtynsky doesn't answer the questions he asks, but he does make us look with a critical eye at what human societies have been doing to the earth and to themselves in a number of crucial industries in many different parts of the globe.