In his teens, photographer Edward Burtynsky worked in the factory of General Motors in his native Ontario. The experience gave him a taste for "seeing large things in a big perspective," as he describes it. He built his career on stark, amazingly beautiful images of the effects of industry on the environment — to him, the huge, jagged rocks in a massive quarry pit spoke volumes more about the natural world than nature photographs of lakes and forests.

On a promotion trip to Tokyo for "Manufactured Landscapes," the documentary film inspired by his work, Burtynsky stressed that he had no intentions of making a political statement through photography and the main reason he loved working with director Jennifer Baichwal was because she understood him completely in this respect. "In this movie there's no obvious rage that comes out at you," says Burtynsky. "Which is as it should be, for who are we in the developed, industrialized world, to feel rage at what China is doing? They are traveling the same road that all the industrialized nations have come, but because of the immensity of the population and the speed with which they are doing it, everything seems accelerated and blown up."

The workers depicted in your photographs and this movie have zero individuality. Why is that?