Dear Readers, when you look at the image above, what do you see? Is it an abstract painting? Is it a painting at all? In fact, it’s an image of a tailings pond from a diamond mine in Kimberley, South Africa, and is by Edward Burtynsky, a Canadian who has been photographing our impact on the natural world for 40 years. Here’s what he has to say:

“Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.

These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire – a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.”

What struck me was how beautiful some of these images were, in spite of what they depicted. I was particularly struck by these photographs of a Russian potash mine. The patterns in the tunnel walls are made by the drills, revealing these psychedelic patterns of colour (you can see the tunnel arcing off to left of the photograph).

This image, which looks to me like an eye, or maybe the centre of a flower, is of the tailings of an Australian coal mine, which has been leaking methane since its closure in 2014.

Not all the images show human damage – the spirals and wavy lines below are swales, channels ploughed into the earth to capture rainwater and and self-seeded plants in the Northern Cape, South Africa.

And the photos below show the polders in the Netherlands, where the Dutch have been dealing with the challenges of being a low-lying country for hundreds of years.

This photo, which looks rather like an illustration from a book, shows pivot irrigation in Arizona – the fields are circular because they’re irrigated from a central point with ground water from the Ogallala aquifer, which is running dry and will take thousands of years to replenish.

The photo below shows fields of rapeseed being grown for biofuels in China. We might compare this to the acres upon acres of rapeseed and maize being grown in the UK for a similar purpose.

These are the greenhouses of Almeria, in Spain…

And these are the oil sands of Alberta at Fort McMurray. Incidentally, for a challenging and exciting read I can recommend John Vaillant’s book on what happened in the fires of 2016 ‘Fire Weather – A True Story From a Hotter World’, which won the Baillie-Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction last year.

Here is what’s left of the landscape after a uranium mine in Northern Ontario was decommissioned twenty years ago….

And this is the image that probably made Burtynsky’s name back in 1996 – it shows the tailings from a nickel mine just outside Sudbury in Ontario. The red colour comes from oxidised waste from the mining process. Interestingly, this is a small stream rather than the mighty river that it appears – scale is everything in Burtynsky’s photos.

I love the sculptural quality of some of Burtynsky’s photographs – this one, of a partially-completed ship in a Chinese megadock really caught my eye.

But there are also human stories here. This is a Madagascan sapphire mine – it is totally unregulated, and people can dig here if they can afford the fees. You can see how dangerous the ‘mine’ looks, as if there might be a landslide at any second. The sapphires are sold for a fraction of their eventual price in wooden shacks in the main town, which feels more like the ‘wild west’ than anywhere I’ve ever been.

Here’s a close up of the top right hand corner, where the men have left their flip-flops so that they can dig barefoot. I find it very moving.

And finally, here are a few factory shots. Some of these took literally days to build. All these ladies in pink are preparing chicken in a Chinese factory.

And judging by the slogans on the banners, you might think this was another Chinese factory. Well, in effect it is, but it’s actually in Ethiopia, as you can see if you look at the workers. China is pouring money into some parts of Africa, and the outcomes will be interesting to see.

What can I say? This exhibition is well worth a look – the Saatchi is a great space, with enough room for you to actually stand back and take in the images. Plus, today it wasn’t at all crowded. It is £18 each though, which isn’t cheap, so if you’d like to see some Burtynsky for free, hang on until 28th February when his new work will be at the Flowers Gallery in Cork Street, London. You can also get a nice idea of the exhibition for free here, with images of each of the rooms at the Saatchi.

Overall, I’m conflicted. The images of such destructive practices as mining and intensive agriculture are often extraordinarily beautiful, and therein lies the rub. If we want to continue to have ‘things’ in the way that we’ve had them in the past, we need to be aware of what that wanting does. I feel a little as if Burtynsky’s photos present a gods’ eye view of the world, a certain detachment. I loved them as abstract images, but they didn’t move me. Let me know what you think.