the reproductions in the book were awful. i had seen his exhibition and purchased th e book because of it. the reproductions were not any where up to the originals. i am a photographer and the book is useless to me.
ronald meyerson

I viewed the original exhibition at the National Arts Gallery in Ottawa a few years back. The images are breathtaking, unnerving and awe inspiring.

The New York Times reviewed EB's recent exhibition and called his work "large, sumptuous and numbingly clichýd color pictures" and called his motives "high-minded". The reviewer went on to say "One of the problems with Mr. Burtynsky's photography is that he uses the same pumped-up pictorial rhetoric of shock and awe in almost every one of the more than 60 works on view. This produces a monotonous effect and, what's worse, a loss of representational credibility. By applying the same compositional formula to every subject, from California tire dumps to new buildings in China, Mr. Burtynsky hammers away at the idea of the global proliferation of industrial production, destruction and waste. But he leaves out a lot of information, too." -and went on to say "Mr. Burtynsky's photographic vision is closer to that of National Geographic magazine. Though technically impressive and, because of its scale, important-seeming, it offers nothing about photography or about the world that we have not already seen in the works of countless other proficient, globe-trotting photojournalists whose names have faded into the oblivion of artistic mediocrity." This observer concurs.