Ice and Light

I have been reading "Arctic Dreams", a book by Barry Lopez that I can only describe as a discourse on the philosophy of a place, in this case in and around the arctic circle. My initial interest in the book was sparked many years ago, but I did not make a point to read it until I had seen part of the arctic in my travels last summer. His chapter on icebergs is particularly wonderful in it's magical and poetic descriptions of the ice and water and light, the effects of each on each other. It made me feel like I had to go out and buy a ticket to Greenland right away, to see something of this before global warming gets any worse.
Lynn Davis photographed in Disko Bay in the 1980's, in the 1990's, and several times in this century utilising her trademark monolithic style. She made use of digital imaging for her series "Fata Morgana" in 2006, which I happened to see at a gallery in Minneapolis that year. I found her earlier work in this subject more honest and affecting in its simplicity, but in reading Lopez, I gained a bit of insight into what she might have been thinking. You can see a good deal of this work on her site, www.lynndavisphotography.com
Another photographer, Camille Seaman, has been working in Antarctica and in Greenland for the past several years, and her color panoramas in particular bring Lopez's eloquent descriptions to life. Her work can be seen here: www.camilleseaman.com
My own brief experience with ice and light is confined to a quick trip last January to Lake Superior, where the shooting conditions were almost unbearably windy and cold, and the light changed so fast that it was impossible for me to expose more than a few rolls of 120 film. At some point under such difficult but spectacular light, I can do nothing but step back from the tripod and watch. Some moments cannot be captured, and it has become a habit of mine to give up the camera and let the experience embed itself on my memory as much as it can. Reading Arctic Dreams brought it all back again, as something ineffable learned, and with that, the desire to witness more of the same.