Manufactuing Landscapes.

These new ‘manufacturing landscapes’ in the southern and eastern parts of China produce more and more of the world’s goods and have become the habitat for a diverse group of companies and millions of busy workers.

-– Edward Burtynsky

The massive scale of the transformation that has taken place in China is visualized in Edward Burtynsky’s recent photographs of enormous factories employing thousands of workers in newly established zones of Chinese industrialization. First presented in the fall of 2005, his pictures offer rare access to the sheer enormity of the industry. This ominous yet eerily seductive examination is achieved by Burtynsky’s distant and formal approach. By using a large-format camera and filling the frame with rows and rows of production lines, the factories and the workers become almost infinite. However in some pictures, particularly Manufacturing #11, Youngor Textiles, Nigbo, Zhejiang Province, China 2005, an individual stands out alone. It is at this point that one recognizes there is a personal story behind each of the millions of factory workers.

Burtynsky was born in St. Catharines, Ontario. He holds a BA in photographic arts from Ryerson Polytechnical University, Toronto, and a diploma in graphic arts from Niagara College, Welland, Ontario. He has received multiple grants from the Canada Council, and in 2004 became the inaugural recipient of the Flying Elephants Foundation Fellowship. Solo exhibitions of his work in 2004 and 2005 included Manufactured Landscapes at Brooklyn Museum of Art; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; and Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; as well as Burtynsky – China at Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco; Charles Cowles Gallery, New York; and Flowers Gallery, London. The Museum of Contemporary Photography featured his Chinese manufacturing work from January 12 through March 4, 2006 in the group show Made in China. Burtynsky established Toronto Image Works in 1985, a digital output facility which he continues to operate.