Fracture: Photographs from Antarctica, 2019

Bozeman, MT: Doring Press, 2020. First printing. (41) pp., 16.5 x 22 inches (box, closed), 31.5 x 21 inches (book, open). Twenty photographic images, laid out and printed in archival inks on Asuka paper by the photographer, in an edition of six numbered and signed copies. Bound in full cloth, with cloth-covered clamshell box (both with title printed letterpress in metallic ink on front cover) by John DeMerritt in San Francisco. New.

The latest volume in Ian van Coller's series of large-format photographic artist's books documenting disappearing glaciers, changing habitats, and other effects of climate change around the world. Van Coller spent several weeks in Antarctica in November 2019, under the aegis of the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Artists & Writers Program; this is the first of several books that will come out of that experience.

The images in Fracture were shot on flights between McMurdo Station, Lake Hoare, and the Allan Hills. Each of the twenty images constitutes one double-page spread (31.5 x 21 inches); the drum-leaf binding allowing each spread to be a single unbroken print.

The large format of the volumes in this series changes the viewer’s relationship to the book; instead of being an object, it becomes an environment, fostering connection and concern.

A passionate printmaker as well as a painstaking and consummate photographer, devoted to the form of the book, van Coller works in various and subtle ways to remind us of just how much we stand to lose by our environmental recklessness.