I first encountered Edward Burtynsky's work back in the mid-1990s when I was dealing with Toronto gallerist Nicholas Metivier on an exhibition project. Back then, the Canadian photographer was shooting mining waste dumps for a series called Tailings.

With that project, he launched a sharply focused exploration of the ways in which global industrialization has permanently altered the landscape. Around the same time Burtynsky had what he calls an "oil epiphany" - the realization that oil is at the center of everything in the industrialized world. And yet we only see the end products - transportation and production of consumer goods - and usually in a more positive light.

Left: Silver Lake Operations #12, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia, 2007. Right: Silver Lake Operations #1, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia, 2007. Copyright Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Hasted Hunt Kraeutler.

So began his 12-year odyssey, which has taken the photographer from the Bonneville Flats Land Speed Trials in Utah to highway interchanges in Shanghai to oil tanker ship breaking in Bangladesh, to the world's largest offshore drilling platform, off the coast of Baku, Ajerbaijan, and more.

In the process, Burtynsky has revealed the brutal interaction between man and the environment in the production and use of oil. He shows the despoilation of the earth and the human cost of the enterprise, which we rarely see: the mechanics of oil's manufacture; landscapes altered by its extraction from the earth; the cities and suburban sprawl generated by its consumption. A selection of images from this series is currently on view at Hasted Hunt Kraeutler, which is hosting a reception for the artist tomorrow night.

The formal beauty of some of these mural-size images, such as the series Silver Lake Operations #1, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia, almost mask the ugliness of the operations they depict. But in one image from that group (above right), the distant ocean at the picture's horizon line is a stark reminder of the power of men and money to destroy the natural world in the pursuit of their own enrichment.

Edward Burtynsky: Oil, on view at Hasted Hunt Kraeutler's new space at 537 West 24^th Street, ground floor, through November 28^th. There will be a reception for the artist tomorrow night, Tuesday October 6^th, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm, where he will sign copies of his new book of the same title (Steidl 2009). The exhibition is presented in conjunction with an exhibition of the same work at The Corcoran Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C., which runs through December 13th. Edward Burtynsky's work has also been seen in American Photography, V 20, V22 and V25.

To read about the gallery's relocation, name change, and its new representation of Edward Burtynsky, please visit Lindsay Pollock Art Market Views.

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