A brief synopsis, spoiler and all:

Lansing’s story opens with a ship’s demise in the frozen Weddell Sea; its crew of 28 evacuate onto the pack ice that is crushing their vessel. The stranded party, we learn, is Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–17 (better known as the Endurance Expedition) whose initial objective was to attempt the first land crossing of Antarctica. Denied of even reaching land, the Endurance crew quickly shift their sights to surviving atop drifting ice floes.

Months later as the ice breaks up, they take to three lifeboats which they’d mercifully salvaged from their ship before it sank. In the face of relentless hardship and weather, the team, still miraculously intact, reaches tiny Elephant Island in the sub-Antarctic Ocean. They are on land for the first time in 497 days but the isolated frozen crag offers no hope of passing ships or rescue.

Consequently, Shackleton sets off with five of his men in the lifeboat James Caird for South Georgia Island to bring relief. The 800-mile journey succeeds against all odds, but lands them on the uninhabited side of the mountainous island, necessitating the first overland trek ever to the other side. Through more ice and snow, this too they survive — barely.

By this time winter has set in, surrounding Elephant Island in ice. Another four months pass before Shackleton can access it by rescue ship. When he does, he finds his entire party still alive, concluding one of the most incredible survival stories of all time.

Alfred Lansing wasn’t the only one to chronicle the Endurance adventure. Shackleton and at least four of his crew members published accounts of the voyage upon returning home, and there’s been a steady flow of literature since. But Lansing’s narrative stands apart for the sheer amount of research involved in piecing it together. According to his publisher, Lansing consulted with ten of the surviving expedition members and gained access to diaries and personal accounts by eight others. It shows in the nuanced descriptions of the men and their personalities, opinions, emotions, and relationships. These real-life human perspectives color the story, move it forward, and lend credibility to an extreme tale that could otherwise pass for fiction.

With Shackleton at the center of each unfolding drama, a comprehensive profile of his leadership emerges: ‘The Boss,’ as his men called him, was immensely respected for his generous character and principles of fairness. He shunned preferential treatment and partook in the grunt work equally. His ability to remain positive and decisive under the most challenging circumstances brought out the best in his team, and he maintained morale by keeping everyone occupied and essential to the effort. Perhaps most importantly, he possessed a sense of humanity that placed his crew’s mental and physical well-being ahead of all else.

Which isn’t to say that The Boss was infallible. He made his share of misjudgements along the way which Lansing readily points out. Readers may wonder why the voyage proceeded at all, given that the Weddell Sea’s ice conditions that year were the worst in memory and that veteran whalers there tried dissuading Shackleton from sailing until the following season.

My guess is that quitting simply went against Shackleton’s grain. Also, the trip was a limited-time opportunity: World War I was just erupting, reducing the chance of another try at the expedition anytime soon. And most certainly, his assessment of the situation differed from that of the whalers. As his granddaughter Alexandra points out: “He was a very practical person, and he would have never attempted anything that he thought could not be done. The main reason was that, above all, he had the lives of his men to consider.”

The first edition of Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage is shown in the photos above. It was published in 1959 by McGraw-Hill New York and Hodder & Stoughton, London. It’s desirable for the annotated endpaper map and a collection of captioned photos by expedition photographer Frank Hurley. A subsequent edition published by Carroll & Graf (1986/1996), pictured below, lacks the map and interior photos. The latest edition, issued by Basic Books (1999), announces a map and illustrations as part of the package.

Expect a wave of interesting new print and online material to emerge as the Endurance centenary approaches. There are a number of exciting events and celebrations in the works too, including adventurer Tim Jarvis’s Shackleton Epic which will attempt to recreate the journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia in a replica of the James Caird using similar materials, clothing, food and equipment to that of the 1916 crossing. It should be a good one to follow.

My series on Antarctic research stations continues with a salute to Ernest Shackleton’s Cape Royds hut, home base to his team’s 1907-09 British Antarctic Expedition, also known as the Nimrod Expedition. The Royds hut facilitated cutting-edge polar science of its day in the areas of geology, zoology, geography and meteorology. The scientific team’s director, Sir Tannatt William Edgeworth David, led from here the first parties ever to reach the South Magnetic Pole and the summit of Mt. Erebus, the world’s southernmost active volcano. Royds was also the launch pad for Shackleton’s 1908 attempt for the South Geographic Pole. His team trekked to within 97 nautical miles (180.6 km / 112.2 mi) of their goal, the farthest south attained by any expedition at the time.

It was also at Royds that Shackleton’s men printed and bound Aurora Australis, the first book ever published in Antarctica. It consisted of of essays, poems and drawings printed on a hand press in an edition of about 25 completed copies whose wooden covers were fashioned from provisions cases. Such crates, in abundance, were repurposed by them for hut shelving and furniture as well.

My use of wood, letterpress makeready, typographic letterforms, and book / bookshelf structure in Long View Study No. 21 allude to the Shackleton team’s production of Aurora Australis and their resourcefulness. The collage’s central figure is Sir Ernest himself who edited the book, wrote its two prefaces, and contributed an ode to Mount Erebus under the pseudonym NEMO.

My piece functions either as a wall hanging or a free-standing artwork. A detached wooden element serves as a shelf embellishment in wall mode or as a bottom support in free-standing mode. In either case the right-hand ‘shelf unit’ is modifiable with extra shelves of varying lengths. The hinged ‘spine’ indicates the manner in which the complete string of Long View panels will connect to one another to form an accordion-fold structure.

One of my favorite Antarctic photo books wasn’t photographed in Antarctica at all. It was
shot in the Northeastern United States to create a highly unique representation of the southernmost continent. The project is titled Imagining Antarctica, authored by roaming photographer, urbanist, and writer Sandy Sorlien.

Left: Peak, New Jersey; Right: Birdbath, Philadelphia.

Sorlien conceived of this photo essay upon having been denied an NSF Artists and Writers Program award to visit Antarctica. In lieu of photographing there, she turned her lens on winter terrain closer to home — New England and her resident state of Pennsylvania. Her pictures were taken with a plastic Holga camera known for its quirky distortion of light, focus, and perspective. These effects were deftly put to work in capturing isolated patches of snow, ice, rocks and sky of ambiguous distance and scale to create a brilliantly convincing series of pseudo-polar landscapes.

Snow, New York.

As it happens, Sorlien’s brother Christopher, a geologist, was dispatched to Antarctica on an NSF research mission soon after she embarked on this project. Sandy seized the opportunity to collaborate and add dimension to her photo essay by juxtaposing his emailed descriptions of the actual Antarctic coast with her imagined vistas.

The similarities between image and text are often striking, lending odd credibility to Sorlien’s photographs even as her true subjects and locations are revealed in the captions. This playful blurring of truth and perception serves to put two seemingly disparate regions of Earth in direct dialogue with each other, lyrically revealing their connectedness.

Left: Landscape, Rhode Island; Right: Ice, Philadelphia.

Imagining Antarctica was published on the occasion of Sandy Sorlien’s exhibition at List Gallery, Swarthmore College, January 21- February 20, 2000. The book is now out of print but with much perseverance I was able to obtain a (signed!) copy from photo-eye. [Update: Copies are readily obtainable by querying through the author's website.]

Many thanks to my friend Susan West for introducing me to this imaginative project.

This post is the second entry in my Antarctic Bookshelf series covering notable polar-themed books. The first was Antarctica by Emil Schulthess.

Bernardo O’Higgins base is a year-round research facility near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Named for the leader of the Chilean military forces that won independence from Spain, O’Higgins is administered by the Chilean Army which provides logistical support, maintains the infrastructure, and assists in scientific work at the station. The base conducts research into ultraviolet measurements, hydrology, oceanography, and human physiology as affected by periods of darkness and light. It also supports studies of the magnetosphere which envelops and shields the planet from the solar wind.

Prominent on the site (and in the center of my artwork) is the German Antarctic Receiving Station (GARS), a satellite ground station enabling reception of high-resolution remote sensing data on the south polar region. The nine-meter parabolic antenna is a joint venture between the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Instituto Antarctico Chileno (INACH), Chile’s Antarctic research institute.

O’Higgins was established in 1948, making it one of the longest-running Antarctic bases of continuous operation. Interestingly it was built in the midst of a Gentoo penguin rookery which still exists. This perch, separated from the Antarctic continent by 50 meters of water at high tide, offers a unique opportunity to study the wildlife and ecology of the region. According to the most recently issued U.S. Antarctic Treaty Inspection Report: “The base keeps a log book documenting environmental impacts on a weekly basis. Penguin nests, eggs and chicks are monitored, as well as other birds in the vicinity of the base. All monitoring is visual; there is no tagging or touching of the birds.” The report however adds: “While base personnel said they attempt to maintain a distance from the nesting penguins to prevent any disturbance, many of the nests are on or near base facilities where people must pass during daily activities, and thus close human contact with these animals is unavoidable.”

O'Higgins and its surrounding penguins (click to enlarge).

O’Higgins Base made news this year when its seawaters were found to contain bacteria that are resistant to nearly all kinds of antibiotics. The research was led by Uppsala University‘s Björn Olsen and Jorge Hernández who detected higher concentrations of the superbugs nearer to the sewage outfalls of O’Higgins and two other Chilean bases. Linking the phenomenon to the quality of sewage treatment remains tenuous though, as Hernández noted that “Chile has provided its permanent bases with modern equipment for waste water treatment that is constantly improving.”

Scientists are now investigating wildlife for clues since the culprit bacteria were also found in gulls in France. Observations suggest that the bacteria may maintain their super-resilience long beyond their exposure to antibiotics, and that they may survive in the wild using animals as hosts.

That possibility is of concern at O’Higgins, situated as it is in a rookery. Penguins nearby have been checked and are deemed free of that bacteria which carry genes that make the ESBL enzyme capable of destroying penicillin, cephalosporins and related antibiotics. Other types of sea birds in proximity to the station are next to undergo testing. Whatever the outcome, the existence of these microorganisms in Antarctica indicates the troubling extent to which drug-resistant bacteria are proliferating on Earth.

There’s nothing quite like sharing a favorite book, or better yet, a collection of favorite books around a theme. Today I’m introducing a new category to the Long View Project blog that does just that. It’s called Antarctic Bookshelf whose posts will feature polar-related editions that inspire me in one way or another. Some of the titles are popular, some obscure; some in print, others out-of-print; ranging from trade books to artists’ books.

My selections follow no hard set of criteria. A book may have strong writing, concept, design, photography, artwork, historical significance, or any combination of these. At least one in the lineup has an outlandish sense of humor and most are rich in creativity and imagination. In the end, what ties these books together (besides their references to Antarctica) is each one’s ability to address the continent in a unique and memorable way.

The first on my list is Antarctica by Emil Schulthess. This photo-documentary book provides an uncommonly artful portrait of Antarctica and U.S. polar research in the late 1950s.

A striking feature of this book is its ‘wide-and-narrow’ format, lending itself to sweeping panoramas and lavish detail. This approach has since been imitated by other Antarctic photography books, but never as cohesively. This book is set apart by an exquisite sense of composition, color and design in its photography and layout alike. The reason is that Schulthess (1913-1996) was both an accomplished graphic designer and Life magazine photographer, overseeing every aspect of his books. Antarctica is but one of several handsome publications he authored, including photo-surveys of Africa, China, the Amazon, Soviet Union, USA, and his Swiss motherland.

Another thing I love about this book is its informative text. Schulthess’s captions are incredibly thorough (often paragraphs long) and well-researched. Yet he skillfully groups and places them unobtrusively apart from the photos, allowing the images to take center stage. In this way Antarctica functions equally well as a coffee-table book and historical resource depending on where the reader turns.

Schulthess introduces the project in an essay: “When the plans for an extensive exploration of the Antarctic continent on the occasion of the International Geophysical Year 1957/58 became known, an old dream of mine appeared to come within reach: a photographic documentation of Antarctica. Such a project had been in my mind for many years. I was particularly anxious to take photographs of the sun and its course in this extreme Southern part of the world. Thanks to American friends, who gave me every possible help, I obtained permission to join the American Naval Operation Deep Freeze IV.”

Operation Deep Freeze was the codename for a series of United States missions to Antarctica beginning in 1955–56, and International Geophysical Year was a collaborative effort between forty nations to carry out earth science studies from the North Pole to the South Pole and at points in between. The term ‘Operation Deep Freeze’ still endures, now signifying general U.S. operations in Antarctica, particularly the regular missions coordinated by the military to resupply research bases.

Schulthess set out in October 1958, flying from Christchurch to McMurdo and on to the South Pole. He then traveled by icebreaker from Marble Point in the Dry Valleys around the Ross Ice Shelf to Little America V — the biggest American scientific station in Antarctica at the time. Little America V was two years old and covered in ten feet of snow but still stationed 250 men when Schulthess visited. From there he voyaged deep inland by snow tractor to Byrd Station and into hitherto unexplored territory to capture more extraordinary images. He wrapped his voyage up along the coast of Victoria Land and Wilkes Land, setting course for Australia in March 1959.

Antarctica was first published in 1960 by Artemis Verlag, Zürich and by Simon & Schuster, New York (U.S. issue pictured here). Both editions are long out of print but copies can be found online with a bit of digging. I’d like to extend a big thanks to my friend Steve Woodall at Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book and Paper Arts for sending this treasure my way.

My latest piece takes the first five iterations of the British Antarctic Survey‘s Halley Research Station for its subject. The base is located on the Brunt Ice Shelf of the Weddell Sea and is well known for its atmospheric studies. The first measurements of ozone depletion in the Antarctic stratosphere were taken here in 1985, leading to the international agreement on banning chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

Halley I was founded in 1956 for the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58 by an expedition from the Royal Society. Halley II, III, and IV were constructed over successive decades as the snow surface, rising about a meter a year, buried each of the bases over time.

My image’s vertical arrangement references the resulting stratification of architecture and ice which places Halley I at a depth of 56 meters (184 feet) in 2012, with the whole lot drifting towards the Weddell at the rate of around half a kilometer annually.

Halley V, still in use, was the first of these stations to be built on steel platforms supported by extendable legs to keep it above the accumulating snow for at least a while longer. Building on this idea, BAS introduced new structures mounted on skis to be moved by bulldozers to prevent them from being buried.

The newest step in this direction is the spectacular Halley VI station, which warrants an artwork and blog post of its own. Look for it here soon.

Long View Study No. 19 (Halley I-V) was created using wood, acrylic, graphite and cut paper. It’s the third artwork in my Antarctic research station series (Syowa and McMurdo being the first two).

The color photographs were taken in 1915, the year the Endurance was crushed
by Antarctic ice in the Weddell Sea. They are among 120 glass plates in total that
Shackleton and Hurley chose to retrieve from the sinking ship. The captain and
photographer then smashed the remaining 400 plates to eliminate any temptation
of taking them along, recognizing that the party’s survival depended on meeting
space and weight limitations. The crew did endure their perilous 500-day ordeal,
as did the 120 photographic plates which they hauled by sledge and lifeboat, now
allowing us a glimpse into one of polar history’s most dramatic voyages.

Frank Hurley considered his color photos “amongst the most valuable records of the expedition.” He used an early polychrome process called Paget, which was patented
in 1912 in England and remained in use until the 1920s.

Paget used two plates, one a traditional black-and-white negative, the other a red,
green, and blue screen scored with a pattern of dots and lines. The negative was
contact-printed to made a transparency positive which was combined with the
matching color screen to achieve the final image. The process was eventually
eclipsed by the truer, richer colors captured by autochrome and later by Koda-
chrome.

The Endurance was the second of Hurley’s three voyages to Antarctica. His first was
as official photographer to Douglas Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition of
1911-14 which brought him to Shackleton’s attention. In 1914, Hurley was signed
on to the Endurance venture where he continued raising exploration photography to
new levels through unique compositions and storytelling with both still and movie
cameras.

His achievements are all the more impressive for the extreme conditions he braved.
He climbed masts, traversed splitting ice floes, and trekked in subfreezing temperatures
— often at night — to take his innovative photos. Lionel Greenstreet, the Endurance’s
First Officer, wrote of him: “Hurley is a warrior with his camera & would go anywhere
or do anything to get a picture.”

Getting the pictures was only part of the challenge; developing them on the ice-trapped
ship was another. The temperature in Hurley’s darkroom hovered around freezing, and
water for washing his plates was obtained by melting blocks of ice. He described the
difficulty in his diary: “Washing plates is a most troublesome operation, as the tank
must be kept warm or the plates become an enclosure in an ice block… Development
is a source of annoyance to the fingers which split & crack around the nails in a painful
manner.”

In 1917, Hurley returned to South Georgia (pictured in the four photos above) for his
final Antarctic filming expedition, culminating in the 1919 motion picture “In the Grip
of the Polar Pack” featuring his footage of the Endurance expedition. The movie quickly
became a critical and popular success, and his still photography also gained a wide
audience as Shackleton featured it in his lecture tours.

Hurley’s original photography and footage more recently appeared in NOVA’s giant-screen
film Shackleton’s Antarctic Adventure as well as Shackleton’s Voyage of Endurance first
broadcast on NOVA in 2002. The Royal Geographical Society in London currently curates
Hurley’s original glass plate negatives and his original prints are held by the Scott Polar
Research Institute in Cambridge and the Macklin Collection in Aberdeen, Scotland.

A comprehensive selection of Hurley’s Paget color glass transparencies from the
Endurance expedition is showcased by the State Library of New South Wales online.

Over Antarctica, Earth observation satellites track shifts in sea ice, ozone depletion, animal populations, weather and other conditions using radar which allow study of inaccessible areas at day or night, regardless of cloud cover.

The most powerful of these spacecrafts is Envisat, launched by the European Space Agency in 2002. Envisat has been helping scientists study the Antarctic Peninsula’s ice shelves in response to the rapid warming that has occurred in that area over the last 50 years. Within days of its launch, the satellite recorded the dramatic disintegration of the Larsen B shelf, and it recently captured the break-up of the sizable Wilkins Ice Shelf — important indicators for ongoing climate change.

Also significant to Antarctic research is the Landsat program, a series of Earth-observing satellite missions jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. Launched in 1972, this longest-running Earth survey from space recently facilitated an Antarctic mapping endeavor called LIMA (Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica) composed of over 1,000 true-color and high-definition images. They constitute an unprecedented data set enabling precise study of changes on the Ice, including curious methods of tracking emperor penguin colonies. The project is accessible online as part of the participating organizations’ education and outreach efforts.

Satellites continue to be essential as remote sensing technology evolves, providing scientists with more information over time. Every form of gathered data — passive visual, active microwave, and sensitive gravity measurements — adds new understanding of Antarctica’s role in the big picture and helps climate scientists assess, predict, and manage continued human impact on the natural system.

The artwork measures 8.125″ x 14″ and was created with cut paper, graphite and wood. The piece will be on view and available at Southern Exposure’s Annual Fundraiser and Art Auction this Saturday evening, May 7 at SoEx, 3030 20th Street in San Francisco.

My latest composition takes climate change research in Antarctica for its theme. The continent is important to scientists for its pivotal role in the Earth’s climate system and
its sensitivity to environmental change. By collecting and merging diverse forms of data
from the Ice, they hope to better understand global warming and predict future
scenarios.

One of the indicators that scientists monitor is the Antarctic ozone hole in the stratosphere, represented by the semicircle at the top of my image. Diminished ozone concentrations are caused by man-made chlorine-containing source gases — primarily CFCs and related halocarbons — which in turn affect weather in the troposphere.
I pictured that as a comet-like gust of wind because ozone depletion combined with increased greenhouse gases and internal climate variability are known to have strengthened Antarctica’s winds. On the positive side, environmental regulation has
been shown to play a successful role in containing the ozone hole and its effects in
recent years.

Scientists also draw information from studying and comparing locales on the ground. I’ve represented two of these areas in my piece.

One is the McMurdo Dry Valleys, indicated by the ‘ice drill’ at lower right. This region’s sensitive ecosystem is monitored for its rapid response to small variations in solar radiation and temperature driven by human activity. Past climate change is studied by analyzing trapped air bubbles in ancient ice, obtained by extracting ice cores from Dry Valleys glaciers.

Another important area is the great Western Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), depicted in
the left half of my piece. Researchers are collecting WAIS ice cores to measure historic greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide, methane) levels in up to 100,000 years of snowfall. The chemical makeup of the ice itself functions as a thermometer, revealing the atmospheric temperature when the snow fell. Research suggests that WAIS may be inherently unstable and that it likely collapsed in the distant past when Earth was a few degrees warmer than today.

Which leads to the issue of sea level rise. I’ve marked my projected water level at 15 inches in deference to the International Panel on Climate Change‘s estimate of a global average rise between 0.6 and 2 feet in the next century. While there’s no question that sea levels are rising, researchers also remind us that climate prediction remains an inexact science. In Antarctica, where temperatures have soared along the peninsula in the last several decades but have changed little over East Antarctica (thanks in part, ironically, to the ozone hole-induced winds), projecting the future has proven even more difficult. In fact just last year scientists were forced to retract a major paper on rising sea levels due to errors that undermined the study’s conclusion. That report suggested that sea levels could rise to a whopping 82cm (32.28 inches) by the end of the century.

Given the number of evolving climatic factors, researchers now generally agree to uncertainty about how much warming will occur in Antarctica. One thing for certain however is that WAIS will be monitored ever more closely, considering the amount of water stored in the continent’s ice sheets.

• • •

On a CalAcademy-related note: I’m currently creating a large, unique Earth Day-themed installation in the museum’s central Piazza space. The project is titled “Handle With Care” and is described on my site and on the CalAcademy’s programs page and in my artist’s statement. You’re invited to come on by, say hi, and see the piece in progress till April 20 and in completed form thereafter.

The figures in this piece represent Ernest Shackleton and his Antarctic crew from the 1907-09 ‘Nimrod’ Expedition who produced the letterpress-printed Aurora Australis
book, fashioning its wooden covers from recycled provision cases.

Each page of the triptych is 11.75″ high x 10.25″ wide, created in graphite and cut
paper. The set is currently on exhibit in Cutters/Cork, the latest in the Cutters series of international contemporary collage exhibitions curated by James Gallagher. The show is
up through March 12 at West Cork Arts Centre in County Cork, Ireland.