Photography didn’t run in Edward Burtynsky’s family. His parents were immigrants from Ukraine who came to Canada after W.W. II. They settled in St. Catharines, Ontario, on the banks of the Niagara River. Burtynsky was born there in 1955. His father, Peter, worked on the production line at the General Motors plant. In 1965, when Burtynsky was 11, a widowed neighbor sold her husband’s darkroom equipment and some Tri-X film to Peter. This purchase marked the beginning of Burtynsky’s career.
As a teenager, he studied black-and-white photography and learned how to print photographs, then began selling portraits for 75 cents apiece at the Ukrainian community center. With the money from the portraits, he traveled to the Canadian countryside to capture images of the vegetation. He was more interested in texture and color than in perfection.
