Gender on Ice
Aug 30th, 2012 by Nick
From the essay “America Dreams” by Connie Samaras:
Although only about 10,000 people have been to the South Pole since it was first explored, per capita it may be more photographed than Disney World. I did not encounter one person, support personnel or researchers, who did not have a camera. Once my identity was established (“it’s the photographer”), many people with whom I talked had definite ideas of what I should be photographing. When not being schooled, I would stand in fascination sipping tea, looking out the galley windows, watching others photograph: NSF visitors with only a few days on site, National Geographic/Discovery Channel film crews with only a week’s time, struggling against the (unseasonably cold) -78°F, trying to negotiate the rickety surface of the ice while simultaneously vacuuming the landscape with video cams and digital SLRs for recognizable icons and dramatic narratives.
Samaras’ piece is from the webjournal “Gender on Ice“, a compilation of art and essays that examine “polar narratives promoting imperial masculinities”. Anne Noble’s gallery is a series of graphic depictions of the Antarctic continent from various museums, tourist attractions, and consumer objects, including an Antarctic board game produced by Shell Oil.
