About

Burtynsky’s works chronicle the major themes of terraforming, extraction, agriculture and urbanization, developing a long-standing preoccupation with the unsettling reality of the human imprint on the planet.

Burtynsky says: “My interest in Africa owes its genesis to an earlier body of work that I produced about China back in 2004.” In African Studies, Burtynsky reflects on landscapes undergoing rapid industrial and manufacturing expansion. Focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa, his images present environments shaped by processes of resource extraction, from the salt pans of Senegal to the ‘residual …