In 2013, photographer Magda Biernat and her husband, illustrator Ian Webster, traveled from Antarctica to the Arctic, visiting 17 countries. They voyaged for the entire year, using every conveyance one can imagine: car, bus, train, plane, boat, bicycle. Meanwhile, the couple were writing and taking photos. Their monthly reports were published on the New Yorker website.
“Ephemeral Monuments,” a show of photographs from that epic pilgrimage, is at Hawk + Hive Gallery in Andes until January 28.
Biernat works like a 19th-century photographer, using real film, a tripod, and a Mamiya 6 camera. Taking a picture is a ceremony of capture. And like the 19th-century photographers, she’s also an explorer. Riding a bus in Bolivia, Biernat noticed red adobe towers in the distance. After making inquiries, she discovered that they were chullpas, funeral monuments built by the Aymara civilization in the 10th and 11th centuries.
” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”>
Concrete Teepee, Palo Duro Drive, Texas, Magda Biernat, photograph, 2013
Biernat documented them, creating a series she calls “Towards the Reborn Sun.” Each of the towers has a low entrance facing east, through which the sun penetrates in the morning. The corpses within, which were generally those of nobles, have been curled into a fetal position. These structures were little-known outside Bolivia and Peru before Biernat observed them.
Another series, “Adrift,” pairs images of glacier fragments in Antarctica with abandoned hunters’ cabins in the Arctic. Temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctic are rising twice as fast as anywhere else in the world. This warming tendency breaks icebergs into shards and changes the migration patterns of the caribou herds in the far north. Inupiat Eskimos must give up their traditional hunting huts, in many cases moving into towns.
The photographer painstakingly paired the forlorn hunters’ cabins with the mini-glaciers, choosing similar shapes—polar cousins. Some of the huts are oddly pinkish. Does the harsh arctic sun transmogrify white into pink?One of the cabins, particularly decrepit, has a tangled swing set—probably twisted by the wind—and a forlorn basketball hoop. Children once dwelled in this simple hut!
” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”>
Bolivian Chulpas, Magda Biernat, photograph, 2013
Biernat prefers a muted palette—at first, I thought the hunters’ huts were shot in black and white—which makes the cerulean blue of the iceberg fragments more startling.
The title of the show is carefully chosen. What, exactly, is a monument? Usually monuments celebrate a hero, and there is an air of heroism in these images. One theme is the persistence of native culture: the Aymara burial towers, the Inupiat cabins, a bewildered-looking bison at Deer Time Ranch in Oklahoma (which contains the only human being in this exhibition, caught in the mirror of a car). A bizarre cement teepee, now abandoned, near Palo Duro Canyon State Park in Texas, may have been a prop from a small-time theme park. The original culture of our continents continues to stalk us.
A photograph is ephemeral, but also a monument. A moment that has disappeared forever remains, preserved.
” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”>
Fisherman’s Castle, Irish Bayou Louisiana, Magda Biernat, photograph, 2013
Biernat is drawn to noble minimalism: a clear central subject with very few distractions around it. But there are exceptions. The image from the show that remains in my mind is that of the Department of Records in Montevideo, Uruguay: a room stuffed full of manila folders containing photographs of the dead. In order to register to vote in this nation, a headshot and fingerprints are required, which are housed forever in a bureaucratic mausoleum. Now that everything is computerized, we have largely lost the romance of manila folders.
This picture is a monument to the good old days of government surveillance, when an actual human being steamed open your mail and followed you down the street.