Big Pictures

In early 2008, the Globe and Mail published a series of aerial photographs of Alberta’s oilsands by Edward Burtynsky, who was by then internationally famous for his grandly scaled images of landscapes ravaged by humankind. Burtynsky was well aware that the beauty of his prints had previously raised unsettling questions about whether he was “trying to estheticize the devastation.” Not this time. As James King writes in his compelling biography, Burtynsky’s photos of the oilsands revealed “a grim, terrifying landscape of desecration.”

That’s exactly how I remember those pictures landing with Globe readers of my acquaintance. As for me, my reaction was conflicted. Of course I grasped, again as King puts it, the “catastrophic mutilation to the environment.” But I was also preconditioned to recognize an impressive open-pit operation when I saw one. I grew up in northwestern Ontario, where my father, an engineer, spent decades at the Griffith Mine, an...