Melt. Portrait of an Iceberg.

Melt. Portrait of an Iceberg. Photographs by Simon Harsent. Pool Productions PTY LTD, 2010. 100 pp., colour illustrations throughout, 16¾x12". Images: the publisher's cropped images from plates from the book.

British photographer Simon Harsent has lived and worked in the UK, US and Australia doing commercial photography work and having his work included in numerous books and magazines.

His work is also in the permanent collections at the Queensland Art Gallery and at the Powerhouse Museum.

'Melt. Portrait of an Iceberg' is the first monograph of his work.


'Melt. Portrait of an Iceberg' can be said to be a photographic journey following the ice berg travlling down what is know as 'Iceberg Alley' ("an area off the West coast of Greenland where icebergs break away from the ice-wall and travel from Baffin Bay to the East Coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, and then enter the shipping lanes").

The portfolio of work starts with "images of the massive icebergs as they enter Greenland's Disco Bay from the Ilulissat Icefjord; it ends with the icebergs off the East Coast of Newfoundland, by which time they have travelled hundreds of miles, and have been so battered and broken down that they are little more than ghosts of what they once were".


Simon Harsent about 'Melt. Portrait of an Iceberg':

"Seeing them first overpowering in grandeur and then, later, about to be absorbed back into the flux from which they came, is both beautiful and humbling: a metamorphosis that endows them with a life-span, each with it's own personality, each with it's own story.

This project had its origin in a wholly personal moment; a personal journey. It is impossible, however, to look at these images and not think of the environmental issues we face right now.

Just as the choice I made in my childhood in some ways defined me as a man, so the choices we are making as a species will define who we become, and what becomes of the planet on which we live."


Read more about this book here, and view more images from the portfolio here.


First two quotes from the statement for 'Melt. Portrait Of An Iceberg' by Simon Harsent, third quote from the publisher's description.