Antarctica is a land of extremes: coldest, windiest, highest, driest. The place New Mexico photographer Joan Myers calls the "most hostile continent on Earth" nearly defies capture by film or words. In Wondrous Cold: An Antarctic Journey, Myers achieves both.
Her exquisite photographs of landscapes, wildlife, and the abandoned huts of early explorers are juxtaposed with glimpses of scientists who seek to understand Antarctica’s past and future and the support staff who facilitate their work. Myers’ journal entries provide a warm introduction to the people and places of this harsh yet surprisingly fragile environment.

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Product Description

Antarctica is a land of extremes: coldest, windiest, highest, driest. The place New Mexico photographer Joan Myers calls the "most hostile continent on Earth" nearly defies capture by film or words. In Wondrous Cold: An Antarctic Journey, Myers achieves both.

Her exquisite photographs of landscapes, wildlife, and the abandoned huts of early explorers are juxtaposed with glimpses of scientists who seek to understand Antarctica’s past and future and the support staff who facilitate their work. Myers’ journal entries provide a warm introduction to the people and places of this harsh yet surprisingly fragile environment.

Science-related sidebars written by New York Times writer Sandra Blakeslee, literary quotations, and excerpts from historic and contemporary sources contribute additional perspective on the world’s most remote frontier.

An award winner at the 2006 American Association of Museums publications competition, Wondrous Cold was praised by the jury for its excellence in graphic design and printing.

And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold: And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #134564 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-31
• Released on: 2006-03-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 158 pages

From the Publisher
Wondrous Cold: An Antarctic Journey is the companion book to a new museum exhibition from the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES). After premiering at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., in May 2006, the exhibition will be shown in 15 American cities through 2010.

As a book and exhibition, Wondrous Cold takes its place among the panoply of varied and engaging topics that SITES presents. We are deeply grateful to Quark Expeditions, our generous sponsor, for sharing our vision of reaching Americans wherever they live, work, and play.

From the Inside Flap
For centuries Antarctica has captured the imagination of explorers, scientists, and armchair travelers. Its starkly beautiful landscape, extraordinary wildlife, and harsh climate only begin to suggest the wonders of the world’s least understood continent.

Intrigued by a part of the planet vividly described in the journals of explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Henry Shackleton, award-winning photographer Joan Myers set out to see for herself why people are drawn to such an inhospitable and uncompromising place. Over the course of several trips, including four months in the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, Myers traversed the continent by foot, plane, helicopter, snowmobile, and Coast Guard icebreaker. Working in below-freezing temperatures, braving blizzards and wind chills as low as -84ºF, she captured entrancing panoramas of Antarctica’s beauty and vast scale, teeming penguin rookeries and docile seals, and the ghostly abandoned huts of early explorers.

From her temporary base at McMurdo Station, Antarctica’s primary research facility, she visited research stations and field camps where astronomers, biologists, geologists, and other scientists seek to unravel the secrets of our planet and the origins of life itself. Myers also recorded the indispensable infrastructure of support staff, whose work makes the science possible.

Wondrous Cold features more than 180 of Myers’ captivating color and black-and-white photographs. Her engaging journal entries describe the physical challenges of taking photographs in a place where a tripod freezes solid in five minutes as well as the research, rhythms, and rituals of life on the Ice. New York Times writer Sandra Blakeslee contributes sidebars on the science conducted at the world’s most remote frontier.

Joan Myers has been taking photographs for more than 30 years, exploring the relationships between people and the land. Her highly acclaimed work has been the focus of five books, including Salt Dreams: Land and Water in Low-Down California and Pie Town Woman, three Smithsonian exhibitions, and numerous solo and group shows. Myers maintains her studio and residence near Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sandra Blakeslee is an award-winning science writer for the New York Times with a specialty in cognitive neuroscience. Co-author of six books, she is currently at work on a book about the new science of body maps.

Jacket design by Andrea Thomas Photos © Joan Myers Author’s photo © Melanie Conner 2003

From the Back Cover
Praise for Wondrous Cold

Joan Myers’ enchanting pictures offer up wonderful insights into the mysterious otherness of the frozen south. — Sara Wheeler, author of Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica and Cherry : A Life of Apsley Cherry Garrard

"There is music in her best prints, subtle, lovely, and nuanced." — Michael More, Camera Arts

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Customer Reviews

To Be Read As Well As Viewed
Although this is a "coffee table" style book, and the pictures are excellent, its stated goal was to review the interaction of humans with Antarctica, and it does this exceedingly well. Ms. Myers insights and her expressions of the feelings of being on this beautiful continent are excellent. Study the photos well, but read the text thoroughly. By all means, get this book if you have any interest in Antarctica.

Wondrous Beauty
I purchased this book shortly before going to Antarctica and the breathtaking pictures and the very engaging narratives about the continent and the people who work and live in such a place was great preparation for such a journey.

Wondrous Cold
I bought this book for my son, who was traveling to Antarctica for his work. He said it was a wonderful book with lots of beautiful pictures.