Artist Statement

In 2010, I was longing to escape NYC for an experience to shake me out of the world I knew.  The only place to go was where I could be, geographically, upside down.  After a three-day sail from the Falkland Islands, through 30-foot waves and more seasickness than I could handle, we approached the jagged peaks of South Georgia rising upwards through the storm clouds.  This remote island existed as somewhat of a myth when I saw it on a map growing up.  As we drew closer to shore, I focused my binoculars and noticed tens of thousands of black and white dots lining the beach.  Not quite sure what I was looking at, it suddenly struck me that I was entering a non-human world.  I was seeing my first king penguin rookery. 

Landing on shore amid these alien-like creatures took me so far out of the world I knew, it defined what a natural paradise really was.  As if a UFO landed in Times Square, this was their world, and we were the strange visitors.  It was this moment that changed me, and as I followed the call of Antarctica’s brutal yet seductive voice, my relationship to nature was never the same.  The first sighting of an iceberg, a behemoth of crisp white and deep blue, ushers you into a realm of time where a minute means a century and one degree Fahrenheit is felt across the entire planet. 

Two years later I made my first trip to Greenland, where a more psychic connection to the ice and polar north was born.  Hiking on the ice cap and sailing through icebergs under the midnight sun, the ice spoke to me like an old wise teacher.  The Greenland ice cap is like a library of the natural history of our planet, a storehouse of experience from the ice age and beyond.  While it is in fact melting, and these incredible landscapes are dying, this is a project of regeneration.  Ice melts and becomes water, and storm clouds form above the ocean and carry much needed rain to the places we live.  We go through our cycles of seasons, droughts, and watch the planet recalibrate herself though dramatic acts of nature, changing the landscapes we knew. 

Flying over the American southwest, high enough to take in the geological abstraction from the air, feels like jetting into the future of what a place like Greenland could look like someday.  The old, sun burned skin of our earth has many tales to tell.  Dried rivers, parched mountains, and deep canyons carved across centuries show her aging face.  The multi-dimensional look at how our natural world transforms and regenerates is what this project is all about.  From the icy kingdom of Antarctica to the feminine polarity of the Arctic, from desert abstraction of the American west to the salt pans of northern Madagascar, the innate intelligence of our planet teaches us that while some landscapes may come to an end, a new spectacle can be born every day.  Nature never misses her curtain call for what is truly the greatest show on earth.

Biography

Jonathan Pozniak is an NYC based photographer specializing in both travel and beauty industry work.  His commercial work has included travel, portrait, and fashion commissions with clients such as Luxury Magazine, Travel+Leisure Asia, Suitcase Magazine, Afar, Icelandair, Google, Essie, Maybelline, Sisley Cosmetics, L’Oreal Paris, Random House, and EMI Music. He’s worked on all 7 continents and often writes the stories to accompany his travel assignments.  His prints have sold through art fairs, private curators, and most recently the Flinn Gallery in Greenwich CT.  Please see more at @jonathanpozniak or www.jp-fineart.com