Burtynsky lives in Toronto, but we meet at Flowers Gallery, in an office decorated with one of his distinctive images: a large, powerful photograph of a railway line blasted into the sheer rocky slope of a forbidding mountain in British Columbia.

Even though it dates from early in his career – it was taken in 1985, just three years after Burtynsky had graduated in Photography from Toronto’s Ryerson University – it is, in many ways, emblematic of his work. The track is visible near the bottom, but only just: most of the composition revels instead in the abstract patterns formed by the flank of the mountain.

The hues of this rock face – russet, ochre and white, offset by the greys of the scree – provide swirls of colour, creating a painterly effect. There is no focal point, but a flattening of space, with no part of the composition privileged over any other. It feels as though Burtynsky was trying to emulate the “all-over” paintings of Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock.