{"id":7499,"date":"2018-04-20T15:09:45","date_gmt":"2018-04-20T15:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/?p=7499"},"modified":"2018-04-20T15:31:09","modified_gmt":"2018-04-20T15:31:09","slug":"last-diamonds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/2018\/04\/20\/last-diamonds\/","title":{"rendered":"Last Diamonds<\/em>: portraits of icebergs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted on behalf of Michael White<\/em><\/h3>\n
\"Diamond<\/a>

Diamond #4 (Greenland 2015) {credit}\u00a9 Francesco Bosso {\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n

A frozen menagerie of yawning overhangs, rotting underbellies, humanistic curves, tumbled-over organ pipes confronts you.\u00a0 Francesco Bosso<\/a>\u2019s Last Diamonds<\/em> is a glorious, sombre collection of 25 monochrome \u2018portraits\u2019 of icebergs off the coast of Greenland, gingerly treading the boundary between art and science. Each plate, created using a traditional analog photographic process,<\/strong> offers haunting insight into the cryosphere, exploring a grey, often cloudy sky, a shimmering jet-black ocean, and an iceberg traversing the intersection.<\/p>\n

An encounter with art inevitably sparks questions. Do I like it? What does it mean? And does an understanding of meaning change whether or not I like it? For some, context is all; for postmodernists, comparisons are odious and art should be understood solely on the interaction of viewer with work. Going by the latter school of thought, Bosso\u2019s is an unqualified success.<\/p>\n

\"Diamond<\/a>

Diamond #2 (Greenland 2015){credit}\u00a9 Francesco Bosso {\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n

His exploration of light, tone and texture evokes the work of Ansel Adams\u2019 assistant and successor John Sexton. Where Adams was all sweeping vistas, Sexton framed more intimate shots. As with so much great landscape photography, the power of the images emerges in part from the sense of the patience and agility needed to capture a perfectly framed moment from a transient confluence of conditions.<\/p>\n

In Diamond #2<\/em>, the thin black line between iceberg and ocean echoes the sliver of distant land visible. The shared angle between cloud and ice in Diamond #5<\/em> suggests an intimate physical linkage. The formality of the images offers an elegant contrast to the turmoil of the active glacial calving fronts where they originated, somewhere out of shot.<\/p>\n

What sets Last Diamonds<\/em> apart from the bulk of landscape photography is the bewildering individuality of the ice. In contrast to the exploration of sculptural form and sheer beauty in photographic collections such as Camille Seaman\u2019s Last Iceberg<\/em><\/a> series (see review here<\/a>), Bosso\u2019s vision is more subtly varied in tone and light \u2014 and somehow, more interiorised.<\/p>\n

\"Diamond<\/a>

Diamond #5 (Greenland 2015){credit}\u00a9 Francesco Bosso{\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n

Even more remarkable is the sense of disorientation spawned by a near-complete lack of scale. Humanity is absent, and what whispers of land there are cannot provide much footing. The icebergs could be 2 or 200 metres tall.<\/p>\n

Yet this lack of context, so intriguing visually, creates a problem highlighted by the book\u2019s title. The global loss of ice is indisputable. But in the absence of context and Bosso\u2019s description of icebergs as \u201cgems of nature in danger of extinction\u201d, the viewer might conclude that we are bearing witness to the end of icebergs.<\/p>\n

This is premature. Even in Greenland, marine-terminating glaciers \u2014 which flow to the sea, calving bergs \u2014 are unlikely to disappear within several human lifetimes. Iceberg production in Antarctica will continue into the foreseeable future. Jakobshavn Isbrae, where much of Last Diamonds<\/em> was shot, has long been the poster child for a rapidly disintegrating cryosphere. But it has thickened and advanced in recent years.<\/p>\n

\"Diamond<\/a>

Diamond #7 (Greenland 2015){credit}\u00a9 Francesco Bosso {\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n

Thus, Last Diamonds<\/em> tends towards over-interpretation, and would have benefited from a more candid summary of cryospheric processes in a warming climate. There are two points to make. First, the calving of icebergs, even monsters such as Antarctica\u2019s A-68<\/a>, is a natural process that has occurred for millions of years. Tying any one calving or season to our activities is spectacularly difficult. Second, these activities will almost certainly produce radical changes in the extent of ice throughout the planet, if unchecked.<\/p>\n

Art is not beholden to the subtle nuances and endless caveats of scientific discourse. Of course, Bosso\u2019s minimalist aesthetic and stark message may be playing for dramatic effect to stimulate discussion around climate change and the cryosphere. More power to that; but the extinctions he hints at are still avoidable.<\/p>\n

Michael White is senior editor in physical sciences at\u00a0Nature<\/em>. He tweets at @MWClimateSci.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For more on science and culture, see: https:\/\/go.nature.com\/2CMOwaL.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A frozen menagerie of yawning overhangs, rotting underbellies, humanistic curves, tumbled-over organ pipes confronts you.\u00a0 Francesco Bosso\u2019s Last Diamonds is a glorious, sombre collection of 25 monochrome \u2018portraits\u2019 of icebergs off the coast of Greenland, gingerly treading the boundary between art and science. Each plate, created using a traditional analog photographic process, offers haunting insight into the cryosphere, exploring a grey, often cloudy sky, a shimmering jet-black ocean, and an iceberg traversing the intersection.  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3353,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,132293],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","category-climate-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}