The Stillness Of Motion: Changing Polar Landscapes

The Stillness of Motion: Changing Polar Landscapes is a visual contemplation of the spatial-temporal concepts of motion and change as they act upon our polar spaces. The work examines both natural change, over time scales that range from the diurnal and seasonal to the geological, as well as the human-induced changes that threaten to disrupt the human and ecological balance of these regions and the larger planetary ecosystem. The grainy black and white images create a visceral experience of an Arctic and Antarctic, both haunting and beautiful, distant yet intimate. With exquisite use of motion blur, these pictures evoke a sense of movement and impermanence that calls attention to the fragile and fleeting nature of these frozen lands, as well as to the motion that exists within all space, from atoms and celestial spheres to glaciers and tectonic plates. At the same time, the softness of the images is a suggestion of memory, or the felt-sense of direct experience, which offers insights into our subjective relation to space, overlooked by the objective aims of the sharp image and the detail-oriented nature of analytical sight. Coming from a non-dual perspective, this work is more closely aligned with traditional indigenous and Eastern philosophical understandings of space, too often overshadowed by the dominant Western geographical imagination. Instead of pitting Man against Nature, as is common to the polar narrative, this work highlights the truly inter-connected and inter-dependent nature of our relationship to this world and to these vast and barren places.

The Stillness of Motion Changing Polar Landscapes by Roberta Holden will be released as a book of photography in 2011 by No Barriers Photography Press.

Image Specs:
While presentation and size in this series are image-specific, we generally offer three sizes: Limited edition of 4, 48” x 72” C-prints, limited edition of 4, 24″ x 36″ C-prints, and limited edition of 8, 16″ x 20″ silver gelatin prints. Please inquire for more information.

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