{"id":593,"date":"2018-09-18T11:45:55","date_gmt":"2018-09-18T11:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.sju.edu\/gallery\/?p=593"},"modified":"2019-08-21T21:41:58","modified_gmt":"2019-08-21T21:41:58","slug":"floating-blue-photographs-by-thomas-pickarski","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.sju.edu\/gallery\/2018\/09\/18\/floating-blue-photographs-by-thomas-pickarski\/","title":{"rendered":"“Floating Blue” photographs by Thomas Pickarski"},"content":{"rendered":"

Floating Blue
\n<\/strong>June 12 \u2013 August 2, 2019<\/h4>\n
Having spent the last 10 summers traveling through arctic regions, Pickarski discovered a deep love for the eternal beauty of icebergs. He finds them to appear sculpturally magnificent, as if crafted in a way that seems too perfect for this world. In this series of photographs, he aims to portray both the ethereal beauty of icebergs, as well as the otherworldliness of the landscapes in which they exist.<\/em><\/h5>\n

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Thomas Pickarski has been traveling to \u201cthe iceberg capital of the\u00a0world\u201d on the west coast of Greenland for approximately ten years. \u00a0While traveling back to the US from Iceland in 2008, Pickarski caught his first glimpse of an iceberg from 30,000 feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy plane flew over Greenland.\u00a0 I was mesmerized by the sights!\u00a0 My next thought was, \u2018Someday I\u2019ll go there.\u2019 \u00a0As I sat with that for a few minutes, I realized the dullness of having just jammed an enormous amount of time between myself and what felt like an urgent calling\u2026Today, I can\u2019t imagine a summer going by without my visiting the ice,\u201d said Pickarski.<\/p>\n

Pickarski has always been amazed by \u201cabstracted and unusual shapes in nature.\u201d\u00a0 He finds these shapes not only in icebergs but also in the jagged and smooth arctic deserts in the volcanic island of Iceland and in the alluvial fans of the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile.\u00a0 Pickarski has been able to see all of these forms in nature because of his month-long travels all around the world.\u00a0 He says that he has \u201cdiscovered that being out of (his) element, is (his) element\u201d.\u00a0 When asked to elaborate on this and on other things he has discovered about himself through his travels, he says that he has had to confront unfamiliar situations due to being placed in environments and cultures that are very different from his own.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt appears the confrontation is with situations, but it is ultimately with myself, and my limitations and fears.\u00a0 Going through the confrontation, I come out on the other side with the realization that my interior coordinates have been shifted.\u00a0 The lines inside me have moved, and my capacity has expanded.\u00a0 It feels like nothing, and everything, at the same time.\u00a0 This is the part of traveling I look forward to the most.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Icebergs have become Pickarski\u2019s signature form since first traveling to the west coast of Greenland, the largest ice fjord in the Northern Hemisphere.\u00a0 He now travels there every year in late August to photograph the icebergs found there.\u00a0 He takes most of the photographs from boats or the hillsides surrounding the ice fjord.\u00a0 He especially enjoys photographing during \u201cthe blue hour,\u201d which he defines as \u201cthe hour after sunset, and just before darkness, when the ice takes on deep blue tones.\u201d\u00a0 Pickarski believes that the icebergs are at their best in terms of color in the absence of bright light.\u00a0 The absence of the sun\u2019s light allows the lines on the icebergs to become more present, casting varying degrees of intense blue shadows across the ice.\u00a0 These details allow the iceberg to become the focal point of the picture, standing alone against a cloud, ocean, and ice backdrop.<\/p>\n

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Pickarski edits the photos with Aperture, a basic but now obsolete software.\u00a0 He explained that he was trained in classic darkroom and chooses to do as little editing as possible.\u00a0 He said, \u201cusing very basic software keeps me focused on maintaining a purity to both my intention as well as the image.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The pieces included in \u201cFloating Blue\u201d were chosen by how they related to the blue theme of the body of work.\u00a0 Pickarski\u2019s favorites are the final few in the collection.\u00a0 They were all taken on the same night, in the same final moments of \u201cThe Blue Hour\u201d.\u00a0 One has an unusual hint of violet, while the last image truly moves Pickarski.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis iceberg sits alone, further away from the cluster.\u00a0 It has dislodged from the bottom of the fjord and has begun to move.\u00a0 As the boat is pulling me away, we see a vast spaciousness around the iceberg as it floats into the darkness, beginning its journey to the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The \u201cFloating Blue\u201d series transports the viewer to a place of stillness and calm.\u00a0 You feel as though you are there, looking at the icebergs from yards away, in the final moments of the day before the sunlight completely disappears.\u00a0 The blue shadows on the icebergs warn of the coming night but the lines, cracks, jagged edges, and dips in the ice hold your attention and make your eye follow each detail, making the viewer forget about all else.\u00a0 The photographs command your attention and there is something new to be found in each one every time they are gazed upon.\u00a0 They illustrate to us a world untouched by human hands, that stands alone against the test of time.<\/p>\n

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~ Elisabetta Mannello \u201821
\nGallery Exhibition Research Assistant<\/p>\n

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Floating Blue June 12 \u2013 August 2, 2019 Having spent the last 10 summers traveling through arctic regions, Pickarski discovered a deep love for the eternal beauty of icebergs. He finds them to appear sculpturally magnificent, as if crafted in a way that seems too perfect for this world. In this series of photographs, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":344,"featured_media":550,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2018-2019-exhibitions","category-archived_exhibitions","category-exhibitions"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.sju.edu\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.sju.edu\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.sju.edu\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.sju.edu\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/344"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.sju.edu\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.sju.edu\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":740,"href":"https:\/\/sites.sju.edu\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593\/revisions\/740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.sju.edu\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.sju.edu\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.sju.edu\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.sju.edu\/gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}