Fire and Ice

Landscape as archive in the work of Simon Norfolk

Abstract

A line of fire snakes left to right along a ridgeline, climbing up the dark volcanic rock to thesummit in the distance. The sky above is patterned with the circular traces of star trails, whilstthe top of the ridge is dusted with snow. Just below the summit, on the left-hand side, a patchof white seeps down the scree face of the mountain, but it fails to reach a small tarn lowerdown that seems to desperately reach up to connect with the edge of the ice. Titled Mt Kenya,1934, this epic image by the photographer Simon Norfolk depicts the current state of the LewisGlacier on Africa’s second highest mountain, with the fiery trail tracking what was the edge ofthe glacier almost eighty years ago. Part of a series of similar images entitled When I Am Laid inEarth, the photograph uses what Norfolk terms a ‘Pyrograph’; a flaming trail to mark thecontours of the glacier from a succession of dates that mark the sad decline of this naturalphenomenon. Using precise data from previous geological surveys, Norfolk used a GPS trackerto meticulously map out where the exact edge of the glacier was for the years 1934, 1947,1963, 1987 and 2004. Norfolk arrived at the Lewis Glacier in 2014 after an exhaustiveinvestigative process to identify the best location globally to make the visual statement that hehad planned out well in advance. Working in collaboration with the environmental charity,Project Pressure, whose mission is to visualize the climate crisis, Norfolk researched a range ofpotential glaciers in Europe before identifying Mt Kenya as offering the best opportunity forimages that most clearly demonstrated the retreat of the ice in the clearest and most reliablydocumented way. Even the time of year was carefully chosen, late October offered the bestcombination of the post summer decline of the glacier but before the snows of winter fell.Norfolk underpins all his works with this depth of research that establishes a credibility andauthenticity to his work, expressed in the detail of caption information that surrounds hisprojects. This specificity and certainty allows him to draw inferences from the locations hedepicts. As he maintains, ‘If you take to the landscape a knowledge about history then it can bereflected back at you. It tells you its memories’.