Statement
Antarctica Photographs
My photographs that were taken in the Weddell Sea, on the Continental ice of Antarctica from Atka Bay to Halley Station and the Antarctic Peninsula, focus on the colors and life of this white on white environment. I often use landscape as the inspiration for my paintings and in the photographs one cannot avoid being aware of the physical place in which the wildlife makes its home and raises its young.
I am attracted to photographs that are simple, capture a characteristic and yet are abstract in their realism: The question can be, “Is that a real event, a real moment?” My response was and still remains, “Yes, incredible.”
These photographs are intended to be a series by themselves. I like that the photographs convey an entirely different sense of the spirit of Antarctica, the wind and the cold than that of my paintings. I also like myself as camera- person who had to exercise patience and direct involvement in taking the photos. It is a chore to tote the gear over miles of ice and set-up to take a family portrait of Emperor penguins in a place nearly never visited by people. Except for the sounds of the rookeries and the wind, there is a complete absence of industrial sound. Photographs lack sound or any suggestion of it. It is as if each scene has been encapsulated and frozen in crystal pure ice.
I have been to the continent six times, some journeys as an expedition artist and recently returned from a circumnavigation of South Georgia, December 2007. November 2008 I will be discovering New Zealand’s Sub Antarctic Islands and its diverse collection of animals.
October 2008
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