Diane Tuft

Frozen in time

Diane Tuft
Frozen in Time

20 June 2019 — 25 August 2019

In collaboration with FCE (Forum for cultural engagement)

The Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow presents ‘Frozen in Time’, an exhibition by American photographer Diane Tuft.

The exhibition includes photographs from both Antarctica and the Arctic. Tuft’s projects draw attention to the dramatic changes brought by global warming. To show the inexhaustible beauty and extreme vulnerability of the most remote places in the world the artist travelled across the North and South Poles, where the results of human influence on the Earth’s climate are especially obvious.

In 2012, a grant from the National Science Foundation brought Diane Tuft to Antarctica for six weeks. The resulting series, ‘Gondwana: Images of an Ancient Land’ documents the primeval beauty of Antarctica, its wild and contrasting landscapes. As the photographer says, ‘Trapped within Antarctica’s extremely cold landscape are millions of years of past atmospheres that record the life and climate that existed at those times.’

‘Using various modes of transportation such as Hagglunds and C-130 aircraft, I navigated −40F degree temperatures and 67 MPH winds, and reached remote places that few have ever seen. The harsh weather made standing upright extremely difficult, even with crampons fastened to my moon boots,’ the artist recalls.

Tuft’s Antarctic photographs are both visual and scientific studies, conveying the subtle and violent atmospheric changes registered on the Antarctic landscape over millions of years. Tuft’s photographs capture the high levels of ultraviolet light in Antarctica and expose the visual effects of years of climate change.

Diane Tuft visited the Arctic in 2015 and 2016. ‘The Arctic is melting faster than any other place on Earth. By the end of this century, it is predicted that the ocean will rise eight feet causing the displacement of millions of people throughout the Earth. Ocean rise will be due to three factors: the melting of mountain glaciers, the thermal expansion of the ocean, and the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

... I decided to visually document the Arctic Melt before this landscape disappears. This would require me to travel to Svalbard, Norway — an archipelago located 600 miles north of Norway’s northernmost point ... In order to experience and record the melt occurring in the Arctic Ocean I would need to travel in a Russian nuclear-powered icebreaker through the Arctic Ocean to the North Pole. After nine years I re-visited Greenland to witness its constantly calving glaciers and the ice sheet’s drastic melt. This series documents a fragile landscape that is disappearing, yet is necessary for Earth’s survival,’ says the photographer.

Tuft is the author of three monographs, titled ‘UNSEEN: Beyond the Visible Spectrum’; ‘Gondwana: Images of an Ancient Land’ and ‘The Arctic Melt: Images of a Disappearing Landscape’. She has had solo exhibitions at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D. C., the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, the Southampton Center in Southampton, New York, Marlborough Gallery, etc. Her work is included in the permanent collection of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The International Center of Photography in New York City, as well as numerous private collections.