Silver Lake Operations #2, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia 2007 3/9

Perfectly timed to surf the flurry of interest in epic Australian landscapes that Baz Luhrman's film is bound to generate, Burtynsky's photos show us a less clichéd antidote to cattle-wrangling and billycan-brewing.

Silver Lake Operations #1, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia 2007 3/10

Standing on the edge of colossal mining pits and peering over the edge in wide-angled wonder, Burtynsky's lens drinks in the superbly detailed blankets of rich colour regularly iconised in Antipodean watercolour. The pinks and whites of the salt lakes are speckled by red-brown soil mounds, and bisected by black roads leading to blacker pits.

Silver Lake Operations #10, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia 2007 2/6

Many of the shots were taken from the air, during low-level chopper flights. In doing so he had to use regular film rather than large format to accomodate a shake-reducing gyroscope. The details are still there, but at such a distance as to render them minute, removing reference points of scale and defamiliarising the landscape.

Jubilee Operations #1, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia 2007 3/6

Burtynsky comes from a background of conservation, chairing the directorial board of Worldchanging online sustainablity magazine. He was recently completed a tour around Asia in a documentary named Manufactured Landscapes, which illustrates the way in which he seeks to record humanity's impact on the environment. Photos of rubber tyre mountains and dam-ravaged landscapes cannot fail to move the observer. "It's like enjoying a scar on your leg," he says. "I'm not supposed to get pleasure out of it, but it's kind of fascinating."

Dampier Salt Ponds #1 2007 2/6

Australian Minescapes by Edward Burtynsky runs from 9 Jan to 7 Feb at Flowers East gallery.

See more of his work at www.edwardburtynsky.com