Exquisite Antarctica book excels
Gulf Islands Driftwood
Thursday, November 21, 2002
By Mitchell Sherrin
A Salt Spring couple has fused the fine arts of exquisite hand-crafted book-binding with a collection of striking, exotic photos depicting ice shelves, stormy seas and huddled penguin rookeries.
The result is an award-winning masterpiece that will likely become a benchmark for future art books.
Antarctica, a large-format photographic art book published by islanders Pat and Rosemarie Keough, shares their combined passions for exploration and artistic excellence.
Even a quick glance at the mammoth book can demonstrate why it won the 2002 Benjamin Franklin Award for printing supremacy.
Enclosed in an archival case of Dutch linen exterior and French flocked velvet
lining, Antarctica weighs 12.5 kilograms (28 pounds).
“Our objective was to create a work of beauty that will last for centuries,” said Rosemarie.
Exuding a sense of gravity akin to the glaciated continental shelf, the book is covered in soft grey morocco, the finest goatskin bookbinding leather. An embossed iceberg design details the slate-coloured cover and spine. “Grey is the colour of Antarctica. It’s the colour of whales, seals and seven months of night,” she said.
Aside from the book’s content, Rosemarie is enchanted by the craftsmanship involved in the book-binding. The Keoughs spent 10 years researching binding techniques that stem from 15th-century Venice and the eighth-century Sinai Peninsula. A team of six artisans will work for two years to hand-bind the 950 Antarctica volumes.
“It’s the first book to combine the beauty and elegance of the classical European style and the strength and durability of the ‘split board’ style.” But unlike the chunky account ledgers typical of tough “split board” binding, the Antarctica book has graceful rounded spines with shoulders and leather joints, free of unsightly grooved hinges on the cover, she noted.
To demonstrate the strength of the binding, Rosemarie picked up the book by the open covers and shook it with enough force to incur criminal charges were the book a child of equal weight.
Rosemarie then brushed the first heavy-bond pages of duotone photos showing the mottled broken-glass surface of the Ross Sea; each chunk a small portal to the interior of the southern continent.
“You enter Antarctica through ice,” she offered mysteriously.
The Keoughs dedicated two austral summers (November to March) in exploration of the polar landscape. “We went to every place you can conceivably get to on Antarctica and took great delight in coming back [to Salt Spring] every time.”
Within their book are enclosed 330 phenomenal colour images and an engrossing 15-page narrative describing their journey. “It’s one of the extremities of the Earth,” Pat said. “We’re attracted to extremely remote and difficult to access places.”
The photos are majestic in their scope and share a rich range of images: from the snuggling lethargy of molting elephant seals, to the abstract designs of sastrugi ice, the haunting gloom of derelict whaling stations and the pristine exhilaration of early polar exploration huts.
In keeping with the hand-crafted excellence of the book, images were printed with innovative 10-micron-dot high-resolution lithography (individual dots are only
visible with 50-power magnification).
“It gives you incredible resolution. Look at the detail in the penguin guano, it actually smells,” Rosemarie said.
As publishers, the Keoughs took delight in the presentation of images that stand alone with minimal text. While one photo might feature the ravaged penguin carcass of a skua kill, a complementary photo shows the rapacious skuas soaring over penguin colony cliffs.
“The composition leads to discovery. It’s laid out in a way that allows the intelligent viewer to learn about the subject without having to spell it out on each page,” Rosemarie said.
But the Keoughs also took delight in the poetic interplay between images. One photo shows a penguin standing on a whale vertebrae juxtaposed against another photo of a gravel beach blooming with whaling ship propellers of a similar shape.
Asked why the Keoughs travelled to Antarctica for the project, Pat described the immediate terror of standing on the Lyubov Orlova’s flying bridge while 75-foot waves tried to pummel him through the gunwales.
Though his response might baffle some armchair explorers, Rosemarie’s rationale was equally perplexing.
Her trip highlight involved five-hour stretches of motionless Emperor penguin observations with a howling blizzard and “moderate summer” temperatures of -23 degree Celsius. She could not find her way back to camp, only 10-metres distant, due to “white-out” conditions and remained in the company of penguins until she was rescued. “I couldn’t see a single red flag. Do you leave the only living creature, or do you go to find camp?”
It seemed as if their personal experiences with the raw power of the landscape had provided the Keoughs with intimate respect for their gorgeous photographic subjects.
Consequently, all net proceeds from their books will go toward the BirdLife Save the Albatross campaign, which aims to change longline fishing practices that threaten endangered seabirds.
“Once you’ve seen an albatross in flight, you’re a changed person,” Pat said. “With a wingspan of 11 feet, they conduct a ballet with the waves… They’re the world’s greatest gliding machine.”
Since the books each sell for $4,500 ($2,900 US), these donations could be a generous boon for albatross conservation efforts.
Book collectors would also be in the company of royal Antarctica fans Prince Charles, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, Princess Patricia von Hohenberg of Austria, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg and Queen Noor of Jordan (honorary president of BirdLife International).
Islanders, regal and otherwise, will have a chance to see Antarctica at its North American launch with a presentation by the artists at Sabine’s Fine Used Books at 2 p.m. on December 7.
