One morning last week I drove the back roads from Leyden to Ashfield to photographer Sarah Holbrook’s home studio. It was peak foliage season. Through a low-lying fog, the narrow roads were ablaze with yellow and orange leaves but when I arrived at Holbrook’s, it was winter.
Clipped to the wall was a series of gorgeous photographs, entitled “Driving Home,” that Holbrook took as she stood in the opening of the moon-roof of her husband’s car as he drove home from a dinner party one winter night. The photos capture perfectly the dreamy feel of traveling home along the dark and snowy roads, satiated with good food and friendship. Houses blur by, trees loom dark and mysterious, roads curve away into darkness.
“Driving Home” will be exhibited at A.P.E. Gallery in Northampton in December, with an artist’s reception on Friday, December 16.
As if this sneak peak into Holbrook’s work wasn’t enough, we pulled these photos down and Holbrook began to replace them with proof prints from another show, “The Liquid Edge,” that will be on display for the months of November and December at Salmon Falls Gallery in Shelburne Falls. Opening reception, including music by Loren Feinstein, will be held Saturday, November 19, 4 to 6 p.m.
Holbrook took the photos in “The Liquid Edge” while on a trip to Antarctica in 2013 and trips to West Greenland in 2015, and to East Greenland and Svalbard in 2016.
In this series, Holbrook gives the viewer an unusual close-up look at a cold landscape many of us will never get to see.
“I love winter,” Holbrook says with enthusiasm. “That’s why I wanted to show you both shows. I really don’t like summer at all. I’m not interested in summer in any way. I don’t like green.”
The main impulse summer awakens in her is to wonder, “Oh my god, how do I get back to the snow?”
Holbrook, who spent the formative years of adolescence in northern Maine, says she has always been trying to get to colder climates. Her dad accompanied explorer Donald Baxter MacMillan to Baffin Island to band birds in 1934, Holbrook says, and she remembers seeing the movies he took there later, when she was kid.
Holbrook’s chance to travel to Antarctica in 2013 started when a friend emailed to say there’d been some cancellations on a trip for photographers, and that she could get a good deal if she jumped on it fast. Holbrook laughs as she remembers her fingers poised over the keyboard, ready to tap in, “Yes!”
Her husband, poet Abbot Cutler, had “about 30 seconds to decide,” she says.
“So we went to Antarctica, and that, I didn’t mean to do at all. But that was really, really profound.”
Holbrook voice lowers to a whisper as she says, “That was probably the most profound thing I’ve had happen.”
“It’s hard to be with nature, just with nature,” Holbrook says. “You know how it’s nice to just sit down with a really close friend? It’s like that. You don’t get that chance around here. There’s a road or a there’s a plane or there’s debris in the woods. So your heart is always kind of breaking. Because you want access and you can’t get it.”
Her voice drops to a whisper again. “And you go there and you’ve got it. You’ve got access. And it’s so much bigger than you.”
Holbrook refers to the icebergs in her photographs fondly as “bergs,” and the more we talk, the more it’s clear that she knows more about them than most people you’re apt to run into.
Holbrook points to some rocks and other debris sitting atop one iceberg and says, “They pick up bits and carry them with them. Things ride on them.”
“Look at this,” she says, pointing to a blocky rectangular shape sitting atop a curved berg. “Where’d that come from?”
And while the photos tend to evoke a sense of majestic silence, Holbrook says icebergs make all kinds of sounds.
“You know when you drop an ice cube into a glass? That cracking?” Holbrook asks. “Well, imagine an enormous piece of ice cracking. They crack loud.”
Some of the bergs are as large as a city block, Holbrook says. And there can be waterfalls or rivers moving over them, making the sound of rushing water.
“And they also move all the time,” Holbrook adds. “They roll. Out of the blue, they just roll. So you have to be very careful when you get near them.”
An iceberg can roll because the bottom portion melts in the warmer water, offsetting its balance, or a piece can crack off and roll as it breaks away, Holbrook says.
“I just wish people could understand how incredible ice is,” Holbrook says. “There are whole cultures that live only with ice, they never see green. They never see forests. And the ice is very powerful for them. The more time you spend with ice, the more you think, ‘I don’t want to live anywhere else. I want to live with ice.’”
Holbrook says that a man she and her husband met in a bar in Longyearbend, Svalbard, the northernmost town in the world, told her, “If you really like this, you need to come back in the winter. You really do.”
“So that’s 40 below and no sun for three months,” Holbrook points out with a laugh. “But he said, ‘You would love it.’”
“Are you going to do it?”
“I want to so badly!” Holbrook exclaims.
“I grew up in Miami,” I say. “So the idea of 40 below — I’m cold to the bone right now, just thinking of it.”
But the beauty of Holbrook’s photos is undeniable. And that beauty is made utterly of cold. If Holbrook’s wish is that more people could understand how incredible ice is, she’s found the perfect way to make that happen.
Go see her shows.
Where to see it
Sarah Holbrook’s show, “The Liquid Edge,” will be on display for the months of November and December at Salmon Falls Gallery, 1 Ashfield St., Shelburne Falls. Hours: Monday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Contact: 413-625-9833 or www.salmonfallsgallery.com. Artist’s reception Saturday, November 19, 4 to 6 p.m.
“Driving Home,” will be exhibited in December at A.P.E. Gallery, 126 Main St. Hours: Tuesday through Sunday, 12 to 5 p.m. Friday, 12 to 8 p.m. Contact: 413-586-5553 or www.apearts.org. Artist’s reception Friday, December 16.