This series of three webinars with Daniel Schwartz sheds light on the origins and metamorphoses, on the making-of, and the intellectual context of this climate crises-driven project accomplished between 2009 and 2017. The series is moderated by Ziyah Gafic.
For While the Fires Burn. A Glacier Odyssey the author embarked on a journey that led from the relics of Holocene glaciation in Switzerland and the Alps into the milieu of the Anthropocene, to collapsing glaciers on three continents. The outcome, a “glaciology in pictures,” as it were, is the result of a synthesis of scientific observation and artistic action. The environmental context makes the project the counterpart and continuation of Delta. The Perils, Profits and Politics of Water in South and Southeast Asia (1997), one of the earliest comprehensive photojournalistic studies on the climate crisis. While the Fires Burn. A Glacier Odyssey was realized partly in collaboration with institutes of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) and of the University of Bern, published in 2017 by Thames & Hudson and exhibited in 2018 at the Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur, Switzerland.
Part II. Bringing down Images from the Mountains
The second webinar is dedicated to the short film Bringing Down Images from the “Mountains of the Moon” (35’), a tour from below the Equator to the darkroom and beyond during the making of While the Fires Burn. A Glacier Odyssey. It shows the author at work in the Rwenzori Mountains of Uganda as well as in his laboratory and studio in Switzerland while printing and editing his glacier work for the book and the exhibition. Following the presentation of the film is a Q&A session.
