Poles Apart Paralle Visions of the Arctic and Antarctic by Galen Rowell Mountain Light Press $400 RUSSIAN icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov unloads ship-based tourists on to a shelf in Antarctica's Weddell Sea, one of many vivid colour shots in Poles Apart: Parallel Visions of the Arctic and Antarctic, by Galen Rowell (publishers Mitchell Beazley).
This is not another pretty coffee table book with pleasant photographs to look at and not much else. Author and photographer Rowell has made more than 20 journeys to Polar regions since 1972 and knows them, if not like the back of his hand, then at least as well as anyone else.
These are regions that defy encapsulation, although this book comes close. Photographs of north and south may make the areas look the same - pink alpenglow on distant peaks above blue-shadowed pressure ridges of sea ice - yet the Arctic northeast of Greenland and the Antarctic of McMurdo Sound are biologically as different as Kansas and Kenya. 'What shocked me most about the Poles on my first travels was neither the cold nor the remoteness, but a bewildering confrontation with my own lack of understanding.' Rowell's last journeys to the Poles were made with scientists with the sole intention of researching this book. The result is a strange but entertaining hybrid of personal reminiscences, exploration history (including a splendid photograph of Shackleton's 1907 Antarctic hut), science and photography.
It is as much a photographer's book as a browser's book. The final chapter is dedicated to brief summaries of how every picture was taken. The photograph of a mummy seal in the Transarctic Mountains he took after setting out on a 32-kilometre walk in training shoes with chemical toe-warmers. 'I told myself that I would turn back if my feet began to lose their feeling.' The arresting picture of a dog team in winter was taken at sunset, in sub-zero temperatures.
Photographers will be interested to note that Rowell uses a Nikon F4 or Nikon N90.