In his visits to American factories, Christopher Payne has documented machinery, workers, techniques, and the materials of manufacture—but as the era of workers making things in America draws to a close, we might ask what these photographs really represent.

The Great Acceleration, Edward Burtynsky’s solo exhibition currently on view at ICP, draws together over eighty photographs made over more than forty years. On the museum’s second floor, an array of unusually large prints shows landscapes radically altered by industrialized human activity. The photographs are pictorially compelling. Their scale and often lyrical composition invite extended examination to identify the objects that make for such engaging patterns.