A Remembrance of Ice

As Iceland's glaciers melt, the historic record contained with in them also disappears.

Iceland's landscape fosters the feeling of human insignificance. However, the irrevocable impact of human influence on this planet is readily witnessed in its retreating glaciers. About 11% of the Iceland is covered by glaciers. All over the small island in the north Atlantic, walls of ice rise hundreds of feet and stretch for miles in the distance. The vast expanse of blue white and black seems impenetrable. But, within 200 years it is estimated that all of Iceland’s glaciers will disappear. Enormous spaces that were once filled with a wall of ice are now just gray fields of dusty rocks. What is lost extends beyond the sea of ice. Within these frozen expanses contains history.

Iceland’s glaciers contain within them a historic record. The bluish white glaciers are scarred with black ash from centuries of volcanic eruptions. A catalog of the past is encapsulated within the frozen grip of these massive ice fields. As the ice slowly turns to liquid, the chronicle contained within disappears. The veins of ash collapse into piles as the ice that once suspended them dissolves and marches to the sea. These photographs are a record of these glaciers and the ashy volcanic signature contained within. A document to remind us of what once existed.

I have photographed to the same few glaciers over several years. Walking further and further each visit to reach the face of the ice. It is the same glacier, but it is not the same ice. The ice I photographed several years before has melted revealing more of what hides behind. But unlike a phoenix, these glaciers do not rise from their ashes.

These photographs are a record. A record of the natural world that has vanished, never to return. They are a remembrance of what we have destroyed. Of what we once had. And now have lost.