This 2018 feature follows Cyprien Verseux during his stay at Concordia Station in Antarctica. His photographs use familiar foods to make the conditions outside the station immediately striking.
Verseux shared aspects of life at the station through his blog, describing the isolation and practical difficulties of an Antarctic winter. The 2018 assertion that even bacteria cannot survive there was too broad: an extreme environment should not be described as universally sterile without evidence.
“Nine months a year, during the winter, it cannot be left or reached,” Cyprien said. “It is so cold that vehicles can’t come and go. We are currently 13 people: technicians, scientists, a cook, and a medical doctor.”
Both the lack of oxygen and barren, desert landscape make the scientists feel as they're living on another planet. “It is the coldest area on Earth, with temperatures reaching below -80°C in winter,” Cyprien explained. “We saw the Sun again in August after three months without it ever passing the horizon. The air is extremely dry and poor in oxygen.”
The station’s scientific work provides the setting for the images. The food photographs are a separate visual experiment, rather than a demonstration of every research activity carried out there.
For the photographs, Verseux took food outside and arranged scenes that appear to suspend an ordinary meal in mid-action. The contrast is the point: objects associated with warmth and comfort become evidence of an unfamiliar outdoor setting.
The gallery is most informative when viewed alongside the photographer’s account of the setup and the reported conditions.
Here's what people had to say:
A familiar meal in an unfamiliar environment
The suspended-looking food makes extreme cold visible through something familiar. These are photographs of a particular setup, not a complete guide to daily cooking at the station. Keep the reported temperature and the photographer's account attached to the images. The surprising visual effect becomes more informative when the conditions are explained rather than left as a magical trick.
Explore the related article: Oymyakon Winter Photographs and Extreme-Cold Claims.
What a still photograph cannot show
The image works because viewers know what the food would ordinarily do. A strand or stream that appears fixed in place interrupts that expectation. A still photograph cannot show the time required to produce the arrangement, so it should not be described as proving that everything freezes instantly. The setup and the resulting picture tell complementary parts of the story.
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