Antarctica

Antarctica is the only continent on earth that will never be a true home for human beings or other land mammals. It is the antithesis of home. Perhaps that is the reason it is fascinating to me. For the last thirty years I have been making photographs that I construct in my studio within my home. The images spring from my life and my home. I have noticed that after a trip I usually have a flood of new ideas to work with, but they seem to have nothing to do with the nature of the trip. For a while when traveling I did not even carry a camera.

In January of 2005 I had the opportunity to travel to Antarctica and I did bring a good camera. As we approached from Ushuaia Argentina, I began to photograph obsessively, especially ice and weather. I must confess that I also made a lot of pictures of the wildly cute and excessively smelly penguin population. Penguins and one of the ice pictures made a terrific Christmas card and perhaps that was to be the end. In January 2006 I began to look at the ice pictures again. Eunice Hurd at Robert Klein Gallery saw our Christmas card and asked if I had more ice pictures. As I put together a cd for her I realized that I did have a real body of work here, pictures that sprang both from my experience as a photographer and my fascination with a world diametrically opposed to my own.

Olivia Parker©2006