Burtynsky's biography: a love of photography since age 11 (10/16/05)

Burtynsky's biography: a love of photography since age 11

by Alexandra Hawryluk

When Ed Burtynsky was 11, his father bought him a second-hand camera. As soon as they improvised a darkroom in the basement of their St. Catharines, Ontario, home, Ed went out and used a whole roll of black and white film on pictures of his dog frolicking in the snow. Watching the emerging images in the developer tray was a moment of magic that captivated him forever. By the age of 12 Edward was taking pictures of the cultural events and parties at the Black Sea Hall, the local Ukrainian Community Center, and charging 75 cents for a five-by-seven print.

Although, Peter Buratynsky (that was the spelling of the family name before Ed dropped the "a" ) encouraged his son Edward in photography, he was a strict and uncompromising parent. Like many Ukrainian immigrants arriving in Canada from post-World War II Germany, he and his wife, Mary, felt very strongly about keeping their four children within the social and cultural boundaries of the Ukrainian Canadian community. However, Edward Burtynsky, who was born in St. Catharines in 1955, chafed at these restrictions. Nonetheless, his father's premature death from cancer at the age of 45 affected the 15-year-old Edward very deeply.

Hoping to become a tool die maker, Edward Burtynsky graduated from high school in 1972 with a diploma in machine shop drafting. As there was no appropriate apprenticeship available in St. Catharines, Mr. Burtynsky reluctantly took a job with an auto parts supplier. Before long he returned to school, enrolling in a graphic arts program at Niagara College in Welland, Ontario, with an evening class in photography.

It was the photography teacher's assignment to go out and take pictures "that show the evidence of man" that encouraged Mr. Burtynksy to look at the landscape in a new way. So, he photographed the countryside near his home where the old Welland Canal used to flow, in the days before it was filled up and turned into a highway. This was his first thematically linked series, and his first use of the large format 4x5 camera - the things that ultimately would become his trademarks.

His exceptionally good work took him into the photography program at Ryerson Polytechnical University in Toronto - the only university, at the time, offering a degree in photography. By the time he graduated from Ryerson in 1982, he was an urbane young man certain of his talent. In 1983 he received a Canada Council grant and traveled across Canada taking pictures of landscapes transformed by man, particularly open-pit iron ore mines and railway cuts, and then exhibited them in various Ontario galleries and libraries.

To provide himself with a financial base and good technical facilities, Mr. Burtynsky established Toronto Image Works, a business venture that proved to be so successful that it threatened to obliterate his creative work. If it hadn't been for a commission on bank architecture for the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the encouragement of the curator, Raphael Bernstein, to go out and photograph stone quarries, Mr. Burtynsky may well have become a full-time businessman.

It was the quarry pictures exhibited in 1993 at the Mira Goddard Gallery in Toronto, that won him international acclaim. His numerous solo shows were reviewed by Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, Smithsonian Magazine, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, Toronto Star, Art in America, Art Forum and Flash Art.

In June 2004 Mr. Burtynsky won the Roloff Beny Photography Book Award for his book "Before the Flood," which documents the construction of the Three Gorges Dam project in China.

In October last year Mr. Burtynksy was one of three winners of the inaugural TED prize of $100,000. In his acceptance speech at the Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference in Monterey, Calif., Mr. Burtynsky proposed to use his art to open a global discussion about our ability to sustain the present pace of development.

In his own country, not only has he been elected to the Royal Canadian Academy, but he has also had the rare honor of having the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa organize a traveling mid-career retrospective exhibit of his work.

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