Edward Burtynsky Kambalda Tailings Pond #1, Kambalda Nickel Mine, WA, Australia, 2025

This image, taken above the Kambalda Nickel Mine's tailings pond in Western Australia, reveals the waste byproduct of nickel extraction-a slurry of fine particulates deposited across a containment field. The circular basin and extending causeway seen from above appear as abstract gestures, echoing forms in painting or land art.

Kambalda has been a key site for nickel mining since the 1960s, part of the resource-rich Goldfields region. In this photograph, Edward Burtynsky turns the consequences of industrial activity into an image of unsettling beauty. The radiating textures of sediment and mineral staining recall both topographical maps and biological growth.

Like his early images of Sudbury's tailings fields or the salt pans in the Australian interior, Burtynsky invites viewers to find formal elegance in environmental scars. But beneath the surface aesthetics lies a deeper commentary on material dependency-here, on the global appetite for nickel, crucial to stainless steel and battery production. The image asks what lies beneath our technologies, and what remains behind when extraction is done.