01/06/2020.

Michael Green

A self determined project.

I am a level 2 student with Open College of the Arts. I have been interested in photography since attending college in Leeds in my teens. I spent hours in the college library looking at photography books showing varied subjects, history to autopsy photographs. The ones that interested me most linked photography with Art.

Recently I have been fortunate to visit Antarctica. I tried to capture the scale of the landscapes in Antarctica with varied success. Whilst thinking about these landscapes I saw people having a spiritual experience as they observe the scale of this place. These spiritual moments made me think of Caspar David Friedrich and his painting “The wanderer above the sea of fog”. This painting depicts a person having a reaction to the landscape before them. I see this same reaction in many of the people who witness the landscape in this polar place.

I find it fascinating watching people taking selfies as I did in a previous course. Equally beguiling is the way this landscape has the power to stop you in your tracks. I used my compact camera allowing me to carry it wherever I went and enabling me to quickly deploy it to capture these moments so I can share them with you.