Description

Paolo Pellegrin joined NASA to document the changing Antarctic in November 2017. The NASA operation, which began in 2009, is part of an 11-year campaign to yield an ‘unprecedented’ three-dimensional view of Antarctic and Arctic. Air-borne instruments are used to gather data that allows scientists to better understand how climate change affects polar ice. The November trip produced the first close-up images of the huge Larsen C ice shelf, which Pellegrin captured, which broke away from the Antarctic peninsula last July and is now adrift in the Weddell Sea.

 

From up there, it’s ecstasy in front of the magnificent. I think I understood what the romantic notion of the sublime was: It’s not only the absolute beauty of these landscapes, it’s the sensation of finding yourself in front of a presence that speaks of eternity. I knew I was looking at something exceedingly beautiful – like a Sistine Chapel of nature – a beauty that is hard to grasp but which also contains something which is not well.

Paolo Pellegrin
© Paolo Pellegrin | Magnum Photos

Paolo Pellegrin was born in 1964 in Rome. He studied architecture at L’Università la Sapienza, Rome, before studying photography at L’istituto Italiano di Fotografia.

Between 1991 and 2001 Pellegrin was represented by Agence VU in Paris. He was a contract photographer for Newsweek for ten years. Pellegrin is one of the world’s leading photojournalists who has documented many of this generation’s major disasters and conflicts, from revolutions to wars to tsunamis.

Pellegrin wishes his work to “create a bridge...to use photography to say something that goes beyond the surface, that vibrates, that resonates.” This approach has lead him to photograph in Lebanon, Iran, Palestine, Romania, Afghanistan, Libya, Cuba, the United States, Mali, Egypt, Algeria, Haiti, Tunisia, and Indonesia.

In 2001 he became a Magnum Photos nominee and a full member in 2005.

© Paolo Pellegrin | Magnum Photos

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