Zeppelin III Photograph - Limited Edition of 10

At the invitation of the German Alfred-Wegener-Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, in April 2022 Daniel Michael Kaiser spent ten days as a visiting artist in Ny-Ålesund, one of the northernmost settlements in the world. During his stay at the joint German-French Arctic Research Base AWIPEV, he used his portable equipment to record sounds for his composition White, Vanishing, a piece for orchestra and field recordings. He furthermore took along an approximately 100-year-old pinhole camera. While preparing for his expedition, he came across works by Herbert Ponting, Frank Hurley, Olav Bjaaland, and other photographers from the pioneering days of polar research. They had accompanied the expeditions headed by Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen and used similar technology to bring back impressions of incomparable landscapes in the extreme corners of our earth. Now, Daniel Michael Kaiser’s pictures document landscapes that are disappearing. Climate change has already taken a dramatic toll on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, where Ny-Ålesund is located—glacier fronts have receded kilometers inland, thawing permafrost causes the static deterioration of structures, avalanches and landslides are occurring more frequently. Kaiser’s analogue images, which give the impression of being historic, run contrary to our visual habits of digital perfection. They show a world whose natural equilibrium has been permanently damaged by human-induced changes. These photographs are supplements to his composition White, Vanishing, and complete as visual testimonies Daniel Michael Kaiser’s artistic processing of his journey to the Arctic.