As the year draws to a close and most are listing their top 10 lists for 2014 I will leave you with what I think is one of the most profound works I have seen this past year. Part document and part performance piece, Simon Norfolk travels to Africa for the NYTimes to photograph the slow disappearance of Lewis Glacier on Mount Kenya due to the profound effects of global warming. His solution to depicting this reality of our world (quickly reaching the point of no return) is both poetic, beautiful and unnerving as he outlines the receding glacier by long exposure while carrying a torch. His description below says it all…
…”The mountain didn’t seem overwhelming or otherworldly now, but rather broken and vulnerable. As Norfolk worked, he could hear meltwater rushing down the glacier’s flanks. Standing next to that ice field, he says, was like standing next to “the exhausted remains of something that was once glorious.” He thought of nature documentaries, of scenes in which, say, a bull elephant is tranquilized by a researcher and crumples on the ground. “You can approach it now, because it’s safe,” Norfolk says. “But you feel its desperateness, as if it is opening one eye and looking back at you, saying, ‘What have you done to me?’ ”…
Simon Norfolk: The Best Photograph of 2014
