Abstract
In an historical and cultural moment in which technology and large populated areas constantly dominate our lives, the authors’ wish is to bring us back to life in its truest and most original state through this informative photographic book, giving us a few moments of fresh air in which the only dominant figure is nature, in its forms and colours.
‘Polar Lights’ – their first book, as well as their first editorial collaboration – arises out of a project that lasted several years and was conceived as a tribute to the beauty and the hues of our Planet in this area… the Arctic.
The editorial line opted for full-page photos in order to convey the highest expressiveness to the images, which will transport the reader – through more than 100 pages – to one of the ice realms in search of a mysterious and fascinating world, in which he/she can feel the vibrating strength of nature. The title “Polar Lights” wants to confer on the book a clear identity through two elements: on the one hand, the photographic element – for this reason the word ‘Lights’; on the other hand, the geographical area to which the theme of the book belongs – for this reason the word ‘Polar’.
Preface (by Christian Roccati, writer)
Right now, I am a reader: I take Polar Lights and, after being fascinated by its cover, I open it. A cold wind from the North blows on me: at first, it seems to me to be an authentic breeze that reminds me of the colourful candles burning through lodge windows on Christmas night; then the air becomes stronger and deeper. It is a powerful and ancestral energy that speaks to me now and brings me back to a wild and indomitable nature that does not want to keep quiet.
These photos lead me far away, beyond the North Sea, to the top of the world, in a desert full of everything, closer to the cold space than to the Earth. I leaf through and the colours dance, they enchant me with whole universes through the crystals of frozen water and with huge heaths full of all those questions that we did not know we asked and that are part of us.
I realise that “desert” is a wrong word that cannot really paint this non-place where life goes not only on all fours, but crosses the skies and the oceans, free to show its variety and beauty. I am thrilled, I feel a spark in me, like when as a child I glimpsed the paths and the traces of an unknown world of which, however, I felt I had always been part of.
This volume is pure sensation; this graphic work transforms colours and shapes into tactile and sound suggestions. It is not “only” an extraordinary graphic book; the images over these pages become photos as means of perception. These sights are a real engine that intrigues the readers and lets them to inform themselves, to give value to what is not seen but is there.
The Arctic is not just mystery: I wish I could say it was there before us and it will be there after our disappearance, but I am sure only of the first thesis. It is an amazing realm which suffers from the climate change and its change could totally change life as we know it.
The authors Claudio Ghiglione, marine ecologist and Kailas guide, and Marco Gaiotti, naval engineer, are both photographers and explorers/travellers and they have been very smart in offering not a big, but an infinite wonder. The reader will fall in love with this Absolute and maybe he/she will learn to defend it, dreaming to be part of it.
I want to thank these two artists of the Being because I know that one day, not so far, I will visit these places or go back there.
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