ICE: An Introduction by Susan Morgan
Listen carefully. Hal Gage’s photographs of ice almost whisper to the viewer:
You think you know me. Frozen bits of water; sullen and immovable stone. But look deeper. I’m not that different from you. Peer beneath my surface. There’s consciousness here. There’s life here. Open your eyes, your mind, your heart.
Never thought of ice and rock quite that way before? That’s good.
Now. How do these photographs make you feel?
Gage’s images are landscape photographs, but only in the most ancestral sense. While they originated in Alaska’s outdoors, replicating nature’s external glory isn’t the point. Gage believes everything in the world has an emotional quality, an inner spark. That’s what he’s interested in conveying.
Science corroborates Gage’s hunch. Quantum physics has found an unseen, decidedly fluid world belying the seemingly solid. Within everything we call matter, particles thousands of times smaller than atoms traverse vast spaces of nothingness.
Human or glacier: dig deep enough and we’re all the same stuff.
Gage’s photographs document that physical reality—and something more. There’s an intangible life-force to these images. Almost an animal heat rising off the two-dimensional print.
The images are photographed entirely in black and white. Absent the distraction of color, their impact travels a more direct path to our emotional center.
Here’s an ice wall of ripples and curves that beckons siren-like, all warmth and sensual promise; light shadows the impossible curves of an ice cave; cloud reflections seem to emanate from deep within a body of still water.
This is foreplay for the mind: Texture and light and line absorb the eye while melting the metaphorical chill. Suddenly one is eager for winter.
There’s mystery here, too. Gage has gone below the surface not just to expose ice’s atomic roots, but its most secret structures. He’s looked where we’ve looked and seen what we haven’t.
His message is simple: This life, this art, is everywhere. Outside your window. Beneath your feet. Simply take a moment to look.
These photographs transcend geographical pedigree. We could be looking into deserts, space, the human body. Where doesn’t matter.
Why, however, is interesting. Winter is a tough season to love. The snow, the darkness—and yes—the ice build up over a lifetime here. Gage came to appreciate winter’s cooler, quieter wonders slowly. Once smitten, he found the season opening itself to him.
His photographs tell the story:
Why fight the inevitable? Remember: Look deeper. Stand still in the moment and let it be. No judgment of dark or cold or wrong. In that softening comes the answer: It’s all here. Everything you search for. Just look outside yourself and let the world remind you who you are.
If a photograph is a moment frozen in time, these images begin the thaw. Nothing is static, even the most rigid, the coldest, the hardest. Matter teems with life.
With this knowledge, resistance slips into easy acceptance, a welcoming embrace of a bigger rhythm. We’re not alone here. The ice tells us that.
Freelance writer Susan Morgan has written extensively about the arts and artists. She is the former Arts Editor of the Anchorage Daily News and an award winning journalist.
