In 1982 Edward Burtynsky graduated from the Media Arts Program at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, Toronto. He opened Toronto Image Works, a commercial lab and darkroom facility and gallery, in 1985. A year later he received a commissioned to photograph bank architecture for a touring group exhibition. Since the early 1980s, his subjects have been mountain railway cuts, open-pit mines, and quarries. Burtynsky has worked as a hard-rock gold miner, which gives him a technical knowledge of the rock that he photographs. His photographs have been exhibited across Canada and in the United States.