Analysis: Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian documentary/ landscape photographer. He is known as one of Canada's most respected photographers and has had his work displayed in over fifty museums around the world. Burtynsky is a well known photographer and is someone I have looked at before but however haven't gone into full detail and looked at many of the meanings behind his work. Burtynsky focuses on modern architecture and the destruction of nature due to new industries that are being created. His photographs include photos of craters, quarries, manufacturing, shipping, oil production and then also photographs the completion of the builds that he is photographing and modern architecture in unusual areas. 

 

This photograph above is one of many in Burtynsky's portfolio which is of a mine in western Australia which he took back in 2007. I really like this photograph because of how its a high angled shot of the landscape and he has composed the shot so that the road is centered in the middle heading towards the horizon. Using the horizon and this road to go towards a vanishing point makes us feel that and looks like the mines along the side of the road are carrying on for miles and the destruction is so much more than just these crater mines in the ground. I really love the contrast of colours in this photograph as well because the white, blacks, creams and browny oranges really show the borders to these mines and roads and even shown the different areas that have been mined far away in the horizon of the photograph because we can see this bright cream sand colours against the much darker colours in the photograph which makes these photographs of destruction and mined away land look really amazing and beautiful landscapes. In some of Burtynskys photographs he also sometimes includes workers, tools and vehicles to be used as a scale to show the vast size of the areas. I really love the composition of Burtynskys work because of how he finds these areas that have all these crazy abstract shapes and lines that are going on around in the photograph from how quarries have been mined out such as this one here:   

 

 

I chose to look at Burtynsky work because I really want to take photographs of urban, destroyed and abandoned areas and document the destruction through enhancing the images. Burtynsky takes photographs of massive landscapes (sometimes also as Arial views) which really shows the vast size of destruction that is happening to an area. I feel that because I don't have the equipment or locations to take these photographs I feel that I want to look at two or three destroyed areas near around me and take some big landscape photographs and then also focus onto detail of the ruins and rubbish that is left in abandoned areas.