A stone’s throw from where Toronto’s King Street West intersects Spadina Avenue sits a lofty second-floor studio full of photographs. Sitting behind the oblong desk in the studio’s sole private office, his back turned to the domineering bookshelf maintaining such literally-titled volumes as Ocean and Land, is photographer-filmmaker Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky is tall and profuse with short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair enjoying a mind of its own. Burtynsky describes his photographic forte as “residual landscapes” – places where humans have arrived, altered nature in a significant way and, in most cases, subsequently left. Noting a particularly poignant photo series, Burtynsky tells me, “In most of my work, we’re the protagonist and nature’s the victim.

Source: Forbes January 23, 2017 18:00 UTC