Stare Into the Heart of an Ancient Iceberg
Nature photographer Jon McCormack notices patterns. He has made a career out of noticing and documenting the patterns that cross his field of vision as he traverses the Earth, from southern Iceland to Svalbard and Antarctica. But, as he illustrates in his latest book of photographs, Patterns: Art of the Natural Worldhe saw trends changing. It’s as if the beautiful, repetitive shapes he captures cry out a warning: the world is changing, and even incredibly solid shapes are fragile under the touch of humanity.
Such was the case as he sat in his cabin on a boat off the Antarctic Peninsula, exhausted from a day spent diving in the icy waters of the Gerlach Strait. “I just started seeing this pattern developing and I did what any reasonable photographer would do,” McCormack recalls. “I just grabbed my camera and ran straight to the bridge.
Read more: “What happens when icebergs collide with art?” »
“It’s a time where I can really point to where this thing is happening when fear occurs and the alertness of the sympathetic nervous system collapses and the parasympathetic nervous type releases it at the same time,” he continues. “It gave the real feeling that there is something much bigger here than I find in much of our world.”
In the beauty and awe of these azure columns slowly marching past McCormack’s camera, a message was written. “It’s just these deep cobalt blue stripes. But the reason it’s happening is because it’s old ice. It’s ice that’s been around for so long that the weight of the iceberg has actually compressed the ice and squeezed out all the air bubbles,” he says. “This ice is at the heart of the iceberg. The only way to see it is through the melting icebergs.”
McCormack adds that the images he brings to life are meant to share his wonder at the fragile patterns of the natural world – stunning and precarious. “I think we spend a lot of time as environmentalists telling people what they shouldn’t do. You shouldn’t drive a car and you shouldn’t do this and you shouldn’t do that,” he says. “I’m looking for a different way to think about it. I’m looking for people to be inspired by the amazing nature and with the hope that we will realize that we actually take nature for granted.”
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Main photo copyright © Jon McCormack; courtesy of and published by Damiani Books, in the book Patterns. All proceeds from book sales will be donated to Vital Impacts, a nonprofit organization that uses visual storytelling to inspire environmental awareness.
