Shipbreaking 26 - Chittagong, Bangladesh

Beautiful yet unsettling, this photograph of a shipbreaking site demonstrates the monstrous scale of human industry and its toll on the land. Photographer Edward Burtynsky made the image as part of a series that started after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, when insurance companies refused to continue coverage of seafaring singlehulled ships. The uninsurable ships were decommissioned and sent to sites like this one where workers pulled them apart for recycling and disposal. Like magnificent skeletons decomposing on the shore, their rusting frames are a striking reminder of how our human desire for progress and prosperity permanently alters the earth.