honorable mention
Yoong Wah Alex Wong turkey
title
Vanishing White
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entry description
The journey across the frozen Lake Baikal is part adventure documentary, part environmental saga. My artistic search is to arrest the moments of epic encounter of the permafrost landscape. This series intend to showcase the exceptional formation and peculiar facet of the oldest (25 million years ago), deepest (5,300 feet) and biotically diverse existing fresh water lake on earth, during the coldest period in winter. Although Lake Baikal is below the Arctic Circle, the Baikal region shares many characteristics with the terrestrial Arctic, such as extreme variability in weather, permafrost within the watershed, and long seasonal duration of ice. In order to witness the aesthetic of such climate change, the arduous attempt is to capture the freezing lake peculiarity in her coldest period. In winter, upper layer of ice freezes as thick as two meters. From far away distance, the white splashes seems like sea waves. However the entire lake’s surface freezes in winter, leaving the surrounding village a lifeless wonderland. In this search, the cracks, textures and broken pieces of ice forms the perfect intricate canvas. The frozen layers are moving, breaking, thawing, retreating and daunting, just as the frozen lake is solid on the surface, yet fragile when the water currents flows underneath it. These marvelous yet temporary ice layers vanishes as the temperature rises; resistive and short lived. Who knows? As world temperature soar, in near future, there may not be any solid ice remain and frozen lake to walk on.back to gallery