Australian Minescapes features a series of compelling and tactile large scale photographs of Australian mine sites taken from the air. From this perspective – through the eye of a master photographer – what some see as scars upon the landscape become extraordinary images of beauty and sensuality.
This sumptuous, large format, casebound book also features a series of accessible and insightful essays on Burtynsky’s work, on photography and Australian landscape and art. These writers and critics include Ric Spencer, Michael Mitchell, Helen Ennis and Alasdair Foster.
Publication of this book coincides with the Sydney launch of the Western Australian Museum's national travelling exhibition of the photographs included in the book.
‘If the human experience can be considered a manifestation of dreams, and desires, mines can be thought of as the source for the raw material of that experience … The imagery I derive from these landscapes therefore becomes symbolic. What this civilisation leaves in the wake of its progress may be the opened and emptied earth, but in performing these incursions we also participate in the unwitting creation of gigantic monuments to our way of life.
‘The rare bird’s-eye vantage point provides for a view that incorporates the grand scale of what human intervention on our planet quite literally looks like with my desire to transcend that reality and create a work of art.’
Edward Burtynsky
The book has recently been reviewed in The West Australian: download The West's article here. Courtesy of The West Australian. Article by Stephen Bevis, Arts Editor.
Burtynskys Minescapes is available through the Museum's shop.
Edward Burtynsky
Edward Burtynsky is an internationally renowned Canadian photographer whose work has been exhibited in many of the world’s leading galleries and is owned by major international public collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.
