Carrara Marble Quarries #24 & #25, Carrara, Italy (diptych), 1993

Taken a few years into Burtynsky’s Quarries project, Carrara Marble Quarries #24 & #25, Carrara, Italy, show the workings and massive scale of a live site. These images contain more practical information than many others in the series. While the angular cuts appear geometric, they conform to the natural contours of the mountain, as seen in the diagonal recession of the left-hand panel. A bulldozer provides an indication of scale. Large blocks lie waiting to be subdivided or sold whole, depending on their ultimate use. We see the materials’ properties revealed in dust accumulations and in mineral stains from water infiltration. This is the beginning of a new type of knowledge that Burtynsky’s work would cultivate: an education in industrial materiality.

Quarries was Burtynsky’s first major body of work. Though still subtle compared to his later pictures, the tension between natural processes and human ambition becomes more pronounced here, sharpening the thematic focus of his evolving project.

Since prehistory, humans have quarried stone to build walls, temples, and tombs. For many ancient civilizations—Harrapan, Minoan, Shang, Sumerian, etc.—the material culture made of perishable organic material—wood, textiles, hide—disintegrated long ago. What typically endures are the ceramics, metalwork, and monumental stone architecture. Exceptionally, ancient Egyptian burial customs have ensured a fuller material record, right down to royal corpses preserved deep within pyramidal tombs. It was during the Railcuts project, while photographing blasted mountains, that Burtynsky began reflecting on the enduring legacy of carved stone, from the pyramids to the masonry facades of early modern skyscrapers. He wondered whether each monumental presence might imply an equivalent absence—an inverse pyramid cut into the land. This became the conceptual springboard for Quarries.