Antarctica is a land of extremes: coldest, windiest, highest, driest. The place New Mexico photographer Joan Myers calls the "most hostile continent on Earth" nearly defies capture by film or words. In Wondrous Cold: An Antarctic Journey, Myers achieves both. Her exquisite photographs of landscapes, wildlife, and the abandoned huts of early explorers are juxtaposed with glimpses of scientists who seek to understand Antarctica’s past and future and the support staff who facilitate their work. Myers’ journal entries provide a warm introduction to the people and places of this harsh yet surprisingly fragile environment.
Science-related sidebars written by New York Times writer Sandra Blakeslee, literary quotations, and excerpts from historic and contemporary sources contribute additional perspective on the world’s most remote frontier.
An award winner at the 2006 American Association of Museums publications competition, Wondrous Cold was praised by the jury for its excellence in graphic design and printing.
And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold: And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
