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When Records Melt at Unseen Amsterdam, discussed in New Scientist<\/em>, 20 September 2018<\/a><\/p>\n Visit the Rh\u00f4ne Glacier in southern Switzerland, and you are more than likely to wander past a small shop. It\u2019s worth a visit: the owners have carved out an ice grotto, and charge tourists for the eerie and beautiful experience of exploring the inside of their glacier\u2019s mass of blue ice.<\/p>\n Now, though, it\u2019s melting. The grotto is such an important part of their livelihood, some years ago the owners invested 100,000 euros in a special thermal blanket. \u201cIt\u2019s kept about 25 metres\u2019 depth of ice from disappearing and has kept the grotto in business,\u201d explains the photographer\u00a0Simon Norfolk<\/a>. But a few winters on the mountain have left the blanket in tatters.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the gesture that fascinates me,\u201d says Norfolk. \u201cThere is something insane about trying to reverse the inevitable \u2013 a gesture as forlorn and doomed as the glacier itself.\u201d<\/p>\n Norfolk and fellow photographer\u00a0Klaus Thymann<\/a>\u00a0climbed up to the grotto just before dawn, armed with a light attached to a helium balloon that cast a sepulchral light over the scene. \u201cI wanted to recreate the same light you get over a mortuary slab,\u201d Norfolk says.<\/p>\n Emilia van Lynden, artistic director of\u00a0Unseen Amsterdam<\/a>, finds the effect as aesthetically chilling as it is beautiful. Of the whole series, called\u00a0Shroud<\/i>, she observes: \u201cWe\u2019re seeing a glacier being wrapped and prepared for death.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s next to no photo-journalism here,\u201d van Lynden explains. \u201cNone of the images here expect you to take them at face value. They expect you to pay attention and figure things out for yourself. These are works into which you need to invest a little bit of time and effort, to see what the artist is trying to tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n On the face of it, then, the presence at Unseen of\u00a0Project Pressure<\/a>, Norfolk and Thymann\u2019s campaigning environmental charity, seems odd. The whole point of the outfit, which has collaborated with the likes of NASA and the World Glacier Monitoring Service, is not just to get us to think about climate change, but to do something positive about it.<\/p>\n But art photography, Norfolk and Thymann believe, is a more effective communication tool than straightforward photo-journalism.<\/p>\n Their point is eloquently made by this 24 hour time-lapse video, created\u00a0with\u00a0a thermal imaging camera. By revealing the heat-properties of the scene, Norfolk and Thymann underline the different temperatures in the ice-body versus the surrounding landscape\u00a0\u2013 a key indicator of climate change.<\/p>\n \u201cI believe artists often make the best social and environmental investigators,\u201d says van Lynden. \u201cThe trouble with \u2018straight\u2019 photography is it looks for stunning subjects and leaves you, well, stunned by them. Glaciers are magnificent in their natural form even as they\u2019re melting away.\u201d<\/p>\n The series exhibited in Project Pressure\u2019s show\u00a0When Records Melt<\/em>\u00a0take a different approach.<\/p>\n Among van Lynden\u2019s favourite works are photographs by\u00a0Christopher Parsons<\/a>, who is better known for photographic portraits of explorers and sports personalities. Parsons won Project Pressure\u2019s open call, and was invited on an expedition to the Himalayas. He collaborated with scientists studying alterations in the microbial life around retreating glaciers, and his photographs, while full of dread, are also accurate records of how changing weather patterns are altering the course of life in these fragile environments.<\/p>\n Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin also take an apparently left-field approach to glacier retreat that nonetheless packs a powerful emotional punch. \u201cTheir work is literally a huge photograph of a bone that was found within the Rh\u00f4ne glacier,\u201d says van Lynden. \u201cThey\u2019re looking at the glacier as a living archive that now is slowly unravelling. All this information, all this stored data, which has been locked in the ice for however many thousands of years, is being lost.\u201d<\/p>\n She is in no doubt that Project Pressure\u2019s message is clear. If you\u2019re not convinced by one series of photographs, says van Lynden, \u201cthen you have six other projects that showcase, each in its individual manner, the irreparable damage we have done to our planet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Records Melt at Unseen Amsterdam, discussed in New Scientist, 20 September 2018 Visit the Rh\u00f4ne Glacier in southern Switzerland, and you are more than likely to wander past a small shop. It\u2019s worth a visit: the owners have carved … Continue reading <\/div>\n![](\"https:\/\/play.vidyard.com\/2CxBrytU3PTP24q3knjo61.jpg?play_button=1\")
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