TORONTO, ON.- The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) announced Toronto-based photographer Edward Burtynsky as the recipient of the $20,000 MOCCA Award in Contemporary Art 2011.

The MOCCA Award will be presented to Mr. Burtynsky at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art at a gala event on April 14, 2011. Each guest at the event will receive a limited edition work of art by Burtynsky created especially to mark the event.

In naming him as the third recipient of the Award, MOCCA cited the national and international acclaim Mr. Burtynsky has received for extraordinarily unique bodies of work produced over the course of nearly three decades. Combining knowledge of photography, its history and techniques, with a sharp perceptual rigour, Burtynsky creates stunning images of the sites of some of the heaviest and most essential industrial activities in Canada and around the world. Often cinematic in scale and always spectacular in pattern and detail, his pictures are as highly regarded for their formal and aesthetic qualities as they are for being powerful, and even disturbing documents of the impact that these activities have upon the landscape, the ecology, upon our very selves and our surroundings. MOCCA also noted that the challenging and timely issues raised by Ed Burtynsky through his work, resonate within the context of our stated mandate to present art pertinent and relevant to our times.

Ed Burtynsky is one of the most globally visible Canadian artists working today. In recent years he has exhibited in some of the world's most prestigious venues, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, among many others. His most recent museum exhibition, Oil, is a five-year international tour organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. His photographs are also included in major collections worldwide, including the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art. Ed Burtynsky's images have been featured in numerous periodicals and publications, such as Flash Art, Art Forum, The Smithsonian, National Geographic, Saturday Night and The New York Times.