Cool Hunting

The celebrated Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky recently published a new book called "Quarries," which is also currently featured at London gallery Flowers Central. After his 2005 book on China, which looked at many aspects of their industrialized society and the 2006 award-winning documentary "Manufactured Landscapes," Burtynsky narrowed his focus to a very specific type of man-made landscape. The subject explores the scars left by industry, at once symbols of development, construction and destruction. While often thought to be open sores left on the earth, Burtynsky's large-scale photographs portray them majestically as inverted temples, conjuring images of the monumental architecture that was created from them.

Known as much for his passionate environmentalism as for his photography, Burtynsky describes his thought process leading to the project, "I remember looking at buildings made of stone and thinking, 'there has to be an interesting landscape somewhere out there, because these stones had to have been taken out of the quarry one block at a time.' I had never seen a dimensional quarry, but I envisioned an inverted cubed architecture on the side of a hill. I went in search of it and when I had it on my ground glass, I knew that I had arrived."

Though in color, the photographs give a monochrome impression due to the creamy chalky tones of the stone and really have the quality of architectural prints. Images in the book were selected from his archives built up over the last 17 years and include sites in Canada, Italy, China, Spain, Portugal, India and the United States. See another image after the jump and pick up a copy from Amazon or Powell's.

Quarries
Through 2 February 2008
Flowers Central
21 Cork Street London W1S 3LZ map
tel. +44 (0)20 7920 7777