Glacial Optics -Arctic Expedition, 2022
Performative, Expeditionary, Process-Based, Experimental Photography

In the spring of 2022, I set sail for the Arctic island of Svalbard, the fastest-warming place on the planet. I went as an artist, seeking to craft functioning camera lenses from the ice of the glaciers, to capture portraits of this rapidly melting landscape through its own ice. These ephemeral lenses became the foundation for Glacial Optics, an ongoing photographic series invoking the gaze of the glacier as means of witnessing and confronting the global climate emergency.

In my studio, I developed tools to shape camera lenses from clear ice —but I had no way of knowing if I would find ice of such purity in the field. From my testing I also knew an ice lens would only work if melting—when a thin film of water forms on its surface, smoothing the ice and rendering it perfectly clear. Below freezing this layer frosts up and the lens loses its clarity. As I set sail for the Arctic wilderness, I braced for the likelihood that even if I found clear ice, the cold conditions might render my lenses frosted and unusable.

In a bitter twist, the expected subzero temperatures never came. I arrived amid record warmth, at least by Arctic standards—climate change, ironically, had made the project possible. With temperatures hovering right around freezing (where they should have been minus twenty degrees Celsius), I discovered that dipping the ice lenses in seawater provided the final push needed —the salt brine triggering melt to create that critical optical layer.

I built a massive tent camera designed to shoot one-by-two-and-a-half-meter negatives. Operating such an enormous camera obscura in Arctic conditions proved a formidable challenge. Each shot required me to load over sixty-eight kilos of equipment into a Zodiac, land on the ice, haul the gear to a shooting location, and assemble the tent on site. More times than I care to remember, just as I finished setting up, word would come from the ship: a storm was approaching. I would have to break everything down and rush back to the ship without a single shot to show for the effort.

This project was made possible by the Open Bay Foundation Arctic Circle Residency. Special thanks to Sarah Gerats and the rest of the team on the 2022 voyage.