Before the Melt

Black and white photographs made in 2005 in the Everest region of Nepal, revisited years later as records of glacial terrain already in transition. The images stand without comparison, holding a landscape on the verge of change.

Before the Melt

In 2005, I photographed glacial formations in the Everest region of Nepal. I was not working within a climate narrative. I was responding to what stood before me. Ice against rock. Still water. Mass and silence.

Years later, when I returned to parts of the same terrain, some of those formations had shifted, receded or disappeared. The digital negatives from 2005 began to carry a different weight. They were no longer only landscapes. They had become records of a condition already in transition.

Before the Melt brings together black and white photographs made prior to visible acceleration. I have chosen not to place them beside recent images. The absence of comparison is deliberate. Each photograph stands independently, holding a moment that did not yet know it was temporary.

The Himalayas are often framed as permanent and immovable. In these images, the terrain feels provisional. Rock fractures. Ice rests lightly against exposed surfaces. A glacial lake holds its stillness within a barren field. In one frame, a faint human shadow enters the landscape without assertion.

This work is not an argument. It is a reflection on perception and time.

The photographs remain quiet. What they contain is not.