The transformation of China's landscape under the rapid economic development of the past 30 years is difficult to comprehend - sprawling skyscrapers cover land where old bungalows once stood, and lines of factories occupy manufacturing zones that were once spreading fields.

From 2002 to 2005, Edward Burtynsky, a renowned Canadian photographer, visited China's industrial complexes to capture the vast scale and minutest detail of the transformation. He unveiled industrial reality through tangled steel tubes in factories, scenes of mass manufacturing, and workers' daily lives.

Workers become protagonists in Burtnsky's photo collections. In his pictures, lines of workers queue in front of their factories, ready for work; rows of workers arrayed in pink suits stand at production lines in the Deda Chicken Processing Plant, Dehui City, Jilin Province; a worker in sunglasses smokes on a large half-built vessel in a shipyard. Workers' canteens and dormitories also attracted the attention of Burtnsky's lens.

According to comments from the Beijing-Paris Photo Gallery in 798 where Burtnsky's works are on exhibition from October 26 to January 10, the photographer perfectly captures the raw elements of mining, quarrying, manufacturing, shipping and oil production to produce eloquent, highly expressive visions that find beauty and humanity in the most unlikely of settings.

Date: October 20 to January 10

Venue: Paris-Beijing Photo Gallery I