In Edward Burtynsky’s photographs, style is inseparable from the tools and systems the artist uses to make them. Rather than relying solely on traditional notions of artistic expression, his images draw much of their impact from the viewer’s awareness—conscious or not—of advanced imaging technologies. Large-scale prints, extraordinary detail, and complex colour fields register not only as aesthetic choices but as feats of engineering. In this way, Burtynsky aligns photography with a broader culture of scientific progress, using the evolving capacities of the medium to mirror the industrial systems and technological acceleration that define his subject matter.
EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY
Unlike many lens-based artists who downplay their medium, Burtynsky foregrounds it. His photographs do not simply depict industrial systems; they are produced by the same technological and material conditions. Emerging from the Industrial Revolution, photography is itself part of a suite of modern technologies, encompassing advanced optics, light-sensitive materials, digital processing, and large-format printing. Burtynsky mobilizes photography’s expanding capacities deliberately, so that the coherence between medium and theme becomes central: the image is compositionally and materially implicated in what it represents. Innovation as it affects photography is part of Burtynsky’s subject matter and is made explicit in the way he explores his constantly evolving medium.
Edward Burtynsky, Self-Portrait #1, 1983, chromogenic print, The Image Centre, Toronto Metropolitan University.
Edward Burtynsky, Landscape Study #4, Ontario, Canada, 1981.
Unlike many lens-based artists who downplay their medium, Burtynsky foregrounds it. His photographs do not simply depict industrial systems; they are produced by the same technological and material conditions. Emerging from the Industrial Revolution, photography is itself part of a suite of modern technologies, encompassing advanced optics, light-sensitive materials, digital processing, and large-format printing. Burtynsky mobilizes photography’s expanding capacities deliberately, so that the coherence between medium and theme becomes central: the image is compositionally and materially implicated in what it represents. Innovation as it affects photography is part of Burtynsky’s subject matter and is made explicit in the way he explores his constantly evolving medium.
Edward Burtynsky setting up a drone.
The artist began his career by fully mastering chemical-based analog photography, using large-format cameras before moving on to digital, where the darkroom and its chemical baths were replaced by the computer. His prints have evolved in a similar fashion, while his uses of drones and other vehicles have taken his work in new stylistic as well as physical directions. Yet, that same progress is also a source of anxiety. Burtynsky’s high-tech images often evoke a latent unease about the very systems they rely on—the relentless acceleration of innovation, the perpetual encroachment of industry on nature keyed to expanding populations, and the growing pressure to adapt to technologies that many viewers only partially understand or trust.
But Burtynsky’s appeal to technology is also grounded in familiarity and fascination. Many viewers, having upgraded phones and cameras over the years, recognize the sophistication of his images. They also understand evolving technologies as expressions of human ingenuity and collaboration. To great effect, Burtynsky makes deliberate use of this viewer response. The seeming infinity of colour in his pictures, the mural scale of his prints, and their extremely fine detail all register not only as aesthetic qualities but as outcomes of advanced technological processes. We understand them not only as pictures but as feats of engineering. This recognition does not require specialized knowledge: photography is a ubiquitous interface through which people document their lives and perceive change, and Burtynsky’s work builds on that shared visual literacy.
Installation view of Edward Burtynsky's Pengah Wall #1, Komodo National Park, Indonesia, 2017, presented at Arsenal Contemporary.
As concern about the unbridled expansion of extractive and polluting industries grows, so does anxiety about the ongoing loss of natural habitats—conditions that have been linked to the spread of diseases across species, including the COVID-19 pandemic that led to widespread lockdowns in 2020. Apprehension is just below the surface of high-tech images. As these are subjects that Burtynsky documents in detail, along with deforestation, desertification and topsoil erosion, the technological innovation embodied in his images themselves contributes, if only subliminally, to the anxieties that they conjure for many of us.
These psychological tensions—wonder and dread in equal measure—are reinforced by the artist’s technical decisions. Burtynsky’s approach to focus, clarity, and detail heightens both the informative precision of his photographs and prolongs the viewer’s engagement with them. Of particular importance is his use of infinite depth of field, a formal choice that further exemplifies his resistance to using established techniques of emotional manipulation and his commitment to the viewer’s perceptual autonomy.
When we stand in front of a work by Burtynsky, the very object we are looking at is an example of the industrial exploitation it depicts. Because it is both materially and conceptually implicated in what it reveals, his work aligns medium and subject rather than keeping them at odds.
TEAMWORK
Burtynsky and his team.
The modern notion of the solitary artist working alone in the studio crystallized in the late eighteenth century with the rise of Romanticism. For most of history, however—including the present—professional artistic production has been collaborative. As early as ancient Mesopotamia, artists worked in workshops organized by seniority. During the Renaissance, with the emergence of the artist as cultural celebrity, successful “masters” responding to multiple commissions became directors of production overseeing specialized assistants. Maintaining well-staffed studios allowed them to scale production to meet demand.
Burtynsky is no exception. Though his team is relatively small, numbering a half-dozen overall, as the founder and principal of Toronto Image Works—now Total Image Works (TIW)—his team is supplemented by highly skilled technicians employed by the related company.
Unlike Raphael (1483–1520) and Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), who retained dozens of assistants, mostly painters, in Burtynsky’s case direct authorship is unambiguous and a function of the medium itself. The artist chooses his overall theme and individual subjects, composes each shot, and presses the shutter release. But much of the work involved in researching locations and processing the resulting images is done by others under his direction.
Burtynsky’s long-time collaborators include Jim Panou and Marcus Schubert, both professional photographers who have known the artist since their days at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in the late 1970s. Panou usually accompanies Burtynsky on shoots. He is responsible for identifying locations, arranging for access permits, procurement of special equipment (such as air and ground vehicles), arranging location accommodations, as well as finding and hiring supplementary technicians (translators, drone operators, etc.) and security personnel where needed. At the end of a day of shooting, Burtynsky and Panou review and discuss the resulting images and undertake a first triage. They eliminate unsuccessful or redundant exposures and identify an initial round of strong images.
Edward Burtynsky and Jim Panou on location in Vancouver Island.
Edward Burtynsky with drone pilot Mike Reid on location at the lithium mines in Chile, 2017, photograph by Jim Panou.
In the studio, Marcus Schubert initiates the final stage of the editing process. He provides preliminary mark-ups on the work prints of selected images, noting areas of concern and suggesting colour corrections from proofs provided by TIW. Additionally, Schubert is responsible for the initial sequencing and layout, as well as production and editorial management of studio-produced publications—now a substantial library of titles—as well as designing certain exhibitions.
Edward Burtynsky and Marcus Schubert, 1981.
Paul Sergeant, a trained photo conservator and aficionado of historical processes, is Burtynsky’s studio archivist and production manager. With a vast corpus of images to manage—numbering in the tens of thousands—Sergeant is the liaison between the studio and TIW, managing print production on all projects. Additionally, Sergeant is the keeper of the equipment, a large inventory dating back over four decades.
Printing is done by Daniel Ebert, TIW’s Master Digital Imaging Specialist. Working closely with the studio team, Ebert is responsible for producing the definitive proofs, or “house copies,” which establish the standard for all future prints until editions (the set number of official copies) are commercially exhausted. Working with master printers has been the convention among professional photographers since the mid-twentieth century. It accommodates increased print production and consistent quality, which, thanks to Ebert, is exceptionally high in the case of Burtynsky.
INFINITE DEPTH OF FIELD
Many photographers use depth of field for aesthetic and interpretive purposes. Depth of field determines how much of the recessive space (or the “field”) is clearly legible. The effect, which involves adjustments of aperture size and focal length, controls how much of the image remains sharp from foreground to background. The technique has stylistic implications that allow the photographer to manipulate the viewer emotionally by determining which part of the image can be seen clearly, and which will be treated with a measure of wistfulness or melancholy through out-of-focus blurring.
Burtynsky resists selective focus as a tool of emotional manipulation. Instead, he adopts a deliberate strategy of deep focus, maintaining clarity throughout the visual field. In works, such Ford’s Highland Park Plant #2, Assembly Line Corridor, Detroit, Michigan, USA, 2008, every element—from foreground textures to distant industrial forms—is rendered with equal precision. Great care is taken to ensure that everything included within the bounds of the image is clear and crisp, however recessed it may be in space. This invites prolonged engagement from the viewer who must actively choose what to look at across the typically large surfaces of Burtynsky’s prints. Though the artist supplies the image, the viewer must navigate it, locating interest without being directed where to look. The explicit surface of a Burtynsky picture—which is enabled by advances in light sensitivity, optics, software, and multiple exposures—has been a feature of his practice from its analog beginnings. Dispensing with editorial manipulation makes for pictures rich in information and for a good measure of viewer agency.
Edward Burtynsky, Ford's Highland Park Plant #2, Assembly Line Corridor, Detroit, Michigan, USA, 2008.
Edward Burtynsky, Manufacturing #14, Bird Mobile, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China, 2005.
Photographic depth-of-field effects mimic the physics of the human eye. For example, when we are looking at things, peripheral vision blurs what we are not focused on directly. Photographers use depth of field as a stylistic technique to relieve the work of the viewer by limiting it, thus instilling a kind of passivity. When he avoids depth-of-field effects, Burtynsky returns responsibility to an activated viewer in the same way that traditional pre-photographic painting might. Consider, for instance, Manufacturing #14, Bird Mobile, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China, 2005, from Burtynsky’s China series: here, the absence of a visual hierarchy compels the viewer to scan the image in its entirety rather than settle on a single focal point. While painters used compositional techniques to guide attention or evoke mood, it was with the advent of photography that focus became a formal option, because the camera made sharpness and blur mechanically controllable rather than an applied effect achieved through painterly technique. Ironically, given its relationship to technology, Burtynsky’s work belongs to an older tradition of picture-making.
Extending sharp focus deeply into the depicted field, however, and requiring more participation on the part of the viewer, can contribute to anxiety. We struggle to identify what we are looking at, to understand which part of the subject is industrial and which natural, and how big the subject is in relation to ourselves. Moreover, are we sure that we haven’t missed a relevant detail? With the artist’s increasing imitation of abstract tropes in recent years, for example in his aerial work, perception is delayed long enough to give anxiety a chance to insinuate itself into the consciousness of viewers unsure of what they are seeing.
Edward Burtynsky, Benidorm #1, Spain, 2010.
COLOUR & TACTILITY
In Burtynsky’s photographs, colour and texture function much as they do in painting—as formal devices charged with meaning. The artist exploits the full chromatic range available to his ever evolving medium. Early in his career, he chose film based on how it rendered the dominant colour of his subject. Some filmstock was better suited to blues, for example, while others produced stronger reds. Later, the advent of digital photography and ink-jet printing allowed for more chromatic control. In fact, the ability to determine, isolate, and refine colour has, like the scale of prints, increased dramatically with digitization. Technology has put photographers on a more equal footing with painters, as the medium of photography has become increasingly integrated into the plastic arts.
Edward Burtynsky, Cerro Prieto Geothermal Power Station, Baja, Mexico, 2012.
Edward Burtynsky, Salt Flats #2, Sua Pan, Botswana, 2019.
Edward Burtynsky, Rice Terraces #2, Western Yunnan Province, China, 2012.
Edward Burtynsky, Dandora Landfill #3, Plastics Recycling, Nairobi, Kenya, 2016.
Tactility—the texture that high-resolution images evoke—has been a consistent feature of Burtynsky’s pictures. Although texture is an illusion in a flat, two-dimensional image, imaging technology has enhanced the legibility of detail while making the surface appear more haptic. This provides the eye with both pleasure and ease when scanning a complex lifelike scene. Texture also interacts with colour to differentiate some details from others of the same hue. Burtynsky uses texture to great effect when he photographs soil disturbed by strip mining, like in Sishen Iron Ore Mine #2, Overburden, Kathu, South Africa, 2018.
Just as he avoids selective focus to maintain interpretive neutrality, Burtynsky uses software to increase the fidelity of his images. He eliminates, for instance, atmospheric distortion and processing noise—the small electronic artifacts, or glitches, inherent in digital capture—wherever possible. The result is greater tactility and chromatic clarity, which in turn facilitates a more incisive reading of the subject. Rather than distort his images for effect, Burtynsky refines them, paying close attention to the verisimilitude of colour and texture, and preferring composition over exaggeration in his post-production interventions. He privileges what his eye saw rather than what the camera recorded to better serve the reality of the scene.
Edward Burtynsky, Sishen Iron Ore Mine #2, Overburden, Kathy, South Africa, 2018.
Edward Burtynsky, Saw Mills #1, Lagos, Nigeria, 2016.
Colour and texture are information in Burtynsky’s work, but their aesthetic properties are not resisted. Here is another instance of emotional ambivalence awaiting the careful viewer: a beautiful colour or texture can become disturbing depending on what it depicts. For example, apple green may be a pleasant colour, unless it appears in a body of water where it implies acidic toxicity or a suffocating bloom of algae. Similarly, in Saw Mills #1, Lagos, Nigeria, 2016, the texture of countless logs floating in a bay might make for an attractive pattern until we recognize that it represents deforestation, inevitable erosion, and habitat destruction.
FRAMING THE POINT OF VIEW
Edward Burtynsky working on site.
The title of Where I Stand, 2021, a short film created by Burtynsky and Jennifer Baichwal, sounds like a declaration of political conviction. In fact, it refers quite literally to Burtynsky’s physical position—where he places the camera, and by extension, where he places us, because the photographer’s point of view ultimately becomes the viewer’s. Fundamental to all photographs, point of view compels the viewer to ask: Where is the photographer’s eye? Often, the impact and originality of the image is determined from where Burtynsky positions his lens. His use of aircraft, lifts, and submersibles has not only introduced novel subjects, but also enabled the more abstract images that are increasingly characteristic of his work.
By placing the viewer in an unusual physical position—high above, close-up, or from an oblique angle—Burtynsky introduces spatial disorientation into his images. When these disorienting perspectives are applied to already unfamiliar subjects, more time must be spent in front of the picture to understand the space, identify the subject, and absorb its implications. The title typically identifies Burtynsky’s often inscrutable subjects and introduces a process of defamiliarization—making the familiar strange.
According to literary theorist Viktor Shklovsky, defamiliarization gives the viewer the chance to assimilate more about things we normally overlook. We tend to ignore the familiar, taking it for granted and saving our cognitive efforts for difficult or unfamiliar subjects. However, when common things become strange, they can be seen anew, and the elided aspects of daily life are rediscovered. If the subject is already novel, this feeling of bewilderment deepens the enigma, surreptitiously giving us more time to process the implications of what we must take longer to see. Burtynsky uses point-of-view to create a distancing effect and, paradoxically, inform his viewers by temporarily confounding them.
Edward Burtynsky, Homesteads #29, Walkerville, Montana, 1985.
EXPERIMENTS WITH ABSTRACTION
In recent years, Burtynsky has experimented more boldly with composition, often by restricting the field of view to eliminate information that might reveal his subject and its scale too quickly. This has often given his pictures a stylistic resemblance to abstract painting and, indeed, to specific types of abstraction—colour field, hard edge, geometric and gestural styles, or “all-over” patterning—depending on the formal properties of the subject. Because abstraction is normally an escape from the world of appearances, Burtynsky’s aesthetically captivated viewer is surprised by the revelation of a less than enchanting subject. This intensifies the push-pull dynamic of visual seduction and ethical discomfort that characterizes so much of his work. And abstraction, which partially arose in response to mechanical reproduction, seems unexpected from an artist who resists overt stylization.
Edward Burtynsky, Swakopmund Salt Works #1, Swakopmund, Namibia, 2018.
Edward Burtynsky, Phosphor Tailings Pond #2, Polk County, Florida, USA, 2012.
By framing his images in a manner that likens them to abstract paintings, Burtynsky associates them with modernist notions of beauty, deepening the viewer’s ambivalence. Abstraction exploits the aesthetic characteristics native to materials by purging them of external references, or as art historian Kirk Varnedoe said of it in the title of his best-known book, by making “pictures of nothing.” Abstract art is generally more engaged with beauty than with other concerns. One could even call it escapist. Cunningly, Burtynsky co-opts abstraction’s forms, styles, and diversions in the service of realism.
A beautiful picture of an ugly subject rhymes with our predicament at this late stage of global capitalism and modernity. We know that our way of life—with its emphasis on convenience, plenty, and profit at the expense of ecological balance—is unsustainable. Along with a reduction in numbers, the survival of our species depends on even greater technological innovation and newer industries—such as those that can usher in a “green revolution”—along with radical shifts in our expectations. By allying the seductive power of digital reproduction with the enchantments of art, Burtynsky doesn’t just reveal our paradoxical situation, he exemplifies it.