I watched the documentary Chasing Ice in at the ICA theatre in London and even on that relatively small screen the power of this film was almost overwhelming. It is the story of photographer James Balog and his quest to capture the changes that are happening in the Arctic. In 2007 he started up the Extreme Ice Survey which, in their words, is an innovative, long-term photography project that merges art and science to give a “visual voice” to the planet’s changing ecosystems. The film documents the story of James and his team self engineering the 28 cameras to withstand the arctic conditions and then installing them at 13 glaciers around the world. As you can imagine with dealing with Arctic type extreme weather quite a bit went wrong and due to the nature of time lapse photography any failure was a year down the drain. The film is a testament to the both the character and vision of James, of how much he (and his team) risked to tell one of the most important stories in human history. Not only is his evidence compelling, but so too are the visuals of these truly unique landscapes. I urge you to check out the film’s website to find out how you can watch this truly important film (and support EIS in the process).
Here also is a link to a TED talk James gave in Oxford, UK that is based on the work EIS did as the basis of Chasing Ice.