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Edward Burtynsky

Silver Lake Operations #14, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia

2006

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Edward Burtynsky

Silver Lake Operations #14, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia

2006

Physical Qualities Chromogenic print, digital exposure, Sheet: 1270 × 1016 mm. (50 × 40 in.)
Credit Line Alan and Carol Edelman Acquisition Fund
Object Number 2010.2
Edward Burtynsky's work asks us to think about the relationship between nature and industry, and the human interventions that contribute to environmental change. The artist’s large-format photographs taken from dramatic vantage points document in exacting detail the desolate sites of mass manufacturing and waste disposal. Located in remote areas that extend from Vermont to Bangladesh, these at once awesome and toxic places are integrally linked to our daily habits of consumption. Behind each of Burtynsky’s images lies a tension between its seductive, ultimately beautiful, visual qualities and the harmful implications of its subject—a tension that evokes our desire for the conveniences of contemporary life regardless of environmental consequences.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by purchase, 2010; Hasted Hunt Kraeutler, New York
Seeing Now: Photography Since 1960

New Arrivals: Gifts of Art for a New Century

Edward Burtynsky: Earth Observed
Gail Markley, "Seeing Now is a Revelation," "Newsletter," The Print, Drawing & Photograph Society of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Vol. 29, No. 1, Spring 2011, p. 3, ill.
"The Baltimore Museum of Art: Celebrating a Museum," The Baltimore Museum of Art, 2014, p. 270-71.

Artist

Edward Burtynsky

1954–2000

Canadian, born 1955
Meet Edward →

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