Product Details
Hardcover
160 pages
Smithsonian Institution Press
Published 2006
Publisher's description
Award-winning photographer Joan Myers traversed the continent by plane, helicopter, and snowmobile to capture life at McMurdo and surrounding field stations, explorers' abondoned huts, the South Pole, and Mt. Erebus, an active volcano, among other landmarks. Her entrancing photographs juxtapose highly detailed panoramas of Antarctica's stark beauty with scenes of its wildlife, people, and historic sites. Wondrous Cold features 150 photographs taken by Myers over several trips to Antarctica, accompanied by her engaging journal entries about daily life for the scientists and staff, observations about natural phenomena, and the physical challenges of taking photographs in a place where a tripod freezes solid in five minutes.
Book Description
Antarctica is a land of extremes: coldest, windiest, highest, driest. The place New Mexico photographer Joan Myers calls the "most hostile continent on Earth" nearly defies capture by film or words. In Wondrous Cold: An Antarctic Journey, Myers achieves both.
Her exquisite photographs of landscapes, wildlife, and the abandoned huts of early explorers are juxtaposed with glimpses of scientists who seek to understand Antarctica’s past and future and the support staff who facilitate their work. Myers’ journal entries provide a warm introduction to the people and places of this harsh yet surprisingly fragile environment.
Science-related sidebars written by New York Times writer Sandra Blakeslee, literary quotations, and excerpts from historic and contemporary sources contribute additional perspective on the world’s most remote frontier.
An award winner at the 2006 American Association of Museums publications competition, Wondrous Cold was praised by the jury for its excellence in graphic design and printing.
And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold: And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
From the Publisher
Wondrous Cold: An Antarctic Journey is the companion book to a new museum exhibition from the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES). After premiering at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., in May 2006, the exhibition will be shown in 15 American cities through 2010.
As a book and exhibition, Wondrous Cold takes its place among the panoply of varied and engaging topics that SITES presents. We are deeply grateful to Quark Expeditions, our generous sponsor, for sharing our vision of reaching Americans wherever they live, work, and play. |
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