Bernard Kalb, Walter Sullivan, and Allyn Baum - Antarctica in Black and Very White

Since early adolescence, I have been drawn to the pure white, yet dangerous landscape of Antarctica. The idea that there is an entire continent completely uninhabited by humans, but that can still sustain life put my existence in the inhabited portion of the world in a different context. Despite the level of human interference or presence in this series of photographs, Bernard Kalb, Walter Sullivan, and Allyn Baum created a report for the New York Times in the winter of 1955-56 documenting the reality of the Antarctic environment. I chose two pictures from the series, the first being Mr. Kalb's untitled photograph of two penguins surveying the area with the Orca whale looming in the background, and Mr. Sullivan's photograph untitled photograph of the two explorers setting up a measuring instruments while the seals loaf around in the foreground. Of the series of photos, these two were the photos that I did a double take and just stared at them.

The first photograph by Mr. Kalb could easily be apart of a series documenting the lives of Antarctic penguins, a 50 year precursor to the film March of The Penguins. The photo reveals a true narrative: the two sentry penguins scouting out for danger, as the whale peeks through the water in the background, all surrounded by a unforgiving environment consisting of ice and mountainous terrain. Furthermore, the framing of the scene was done so that the eye starts in the middle of the frame with the fin of the whale, then can either diagonally go to the left to see the penguins, or diagonally right to see the mountain top peaking out of the snow. Additional elements of the photograph is the seemingly tactile snow and ice, as the photographer was able to capture the glisten and sheen of the surface in the photograph.

Mr. Sullivan's photograph of the explorers is truly astounding, and was the first one which got my attention. The environment is completely white, no clear sky, water, or mountains to separate the subjects from the background or provide more context for their location. Mr. Sullivan must have incredible patience and darkroom skill necessary to burn in the paw prints in the snow from the seals, but more so the clouds in the sky as well as the appearance of a horizon line. The existence of a visible horizon line reinforces the fact that they are essentially alone, in a barren land of snow and ice; essentially it's the tundra version of the scene in Lawrence of Arabia where Peter O'Toole's character is staring out into the barren dessert.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/antarctica-in-black-and-very-white/