The End of Reference

• Main Author: Naldi, Pat
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Environmental Geography; Environmental Sciences; Fine Art; Photography; Arctic; Fjortende Julibreen; Fjortende Julibukta; Haakon VII Land; Svalbard; Svalbard Archipelago; Climate change; glacier; Iceberg*; Julibreen; midnight sun; Spitsbergen
• Online Access: https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/18752/; https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/18752/1/5.jpg; https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/18752/2/7.jpg; https://niche-canada.org/

On the 19th April 2022, the first day of the Midnight Sun at 79°07.23’ N - 011°51.5’ E, I shot a roll of 120mm analogue colour film on a vintage 102-year-old Box Brownie camera in Fjortende Julibukta bay in Haakon VII Land at Spitsbergen, Svalbard. The Fjortende Julibreen glacier is the backdrop to the bay strewn with thousands of its beached and floating bergy bits and growlers. The bay is an iceberg graveyard of pieces that have calved from its glacier; this is where ice goes to die. Merging vintage ocular technology of exploration with our environmental crisis of the present day, this essay reflects through the melting ice bearing witness to climate change in one of the receding glaciers of the high Arctic along the Svalbard archipelago, which is warming at the fastest rate anywhere. Appears on NiCHE - Network in Canadian History and Environment