Endframe – “Iberia Quarries #3” by Edward Burtynsky

Joe Cornish

Professional landscape photographer.

joecornishphotographer.com

Once Upon a Time, before the internet and Amazon, there were bookshops that specialised in Photo books, and the best of these was Beyond Words in Edinburgh. Neil McIlwraith still runs Beyond Words as an excellent online service; nevertheless, it is hard not to feel a sense of loss for the sheer indulgent pleasure of browsing in a place devoted to the photographic image.

On my last visit to (the analogue?) Beyond Words I acquired Edward Burtynsky’s book, Quarries. I treasure it as much as my Peter Dombrovskis collection, and whenever I do peruse I am left in awe.

Every image in Quarries is of the highest technical quality, full of detail, and superbly reproduced. And while this article is supposed to focus on a single image it is important to illustrate the context; in fact, almost any of these photographs would merit in-depth analysis and appraisal; it is the sheer tour de force nature of the project as a whole that encourages me to select Edward Burtynsky’s work for End Frame. The places the Quarries project visits are not numerous, but they include locations in China India, Europe and North America, and there is a global, epic scale to the book (which is in itself a substantial 200-page landscape-shaped tome).