All my Icicle  photographs are compilations of from 2 to 20 individual images; taken in natural light and edited only for contrast and brightness.  A crazy challenge to photograph, I find it endlessly fascinating and well worth enduring the cold and the unpredictability of our environment to capture these Ice sculptures during the few days each year when  they begin, grow, shrink and disappear on their way to becoming drinking water, part of our river systems, nourishment for our food or rain over India.

 

For thirty winters, I’ve waited and watched as drops of water, this time arriving in the Berkshires as snowflakes, collected, melted, partially evaporated and giving in to temperature and gravity, were pulled to the earth only to refreeze along the way  bonding together in the creation of ever-changing vertical water sculptures. They grow and shrink in reaction to the sun, temperature and wind. These infinite number of more than 4-billion-year-old water molecules will freeze as a solid, for just a few days, flow as a liquid and eventually evaporate as a gas to defy gravity and start again their never-ending cycle. They always have and always will.

 

Since all icicles are colorless until the sun rays reflect off every colored object in their environment and collect, from every angle, on their internal icy prisms and shapes, I have the opportunity to consider the background of equal importance as every slight rotation around the subject produces dramatic change in color, clarity and shape.

 

To look closely into these translucent Ice sculptures is to peer through millions of sextillions of water molecules each having had the opportunity to be a part of all the bodies of water on the planet and in the cells and breath of dinosaurs and our ancestors; are reflecting, refracting and absorbing the uncountable rays of light bouncing off and assuming the colors and dynamics of their surrounding trees, branches, leaves, needles, snow, grass, sky and shadows. Every Icicle determines its' own shape, will never be duplicated and always; right to the end, moves with grace in beautiful indestructible droplets. 

        

These Icicles represent thirty years of shooting in the cold to capture thousands of images stitched together to produce hundreds of one of a kind Icicle Photographs. Offered in limited editions, these giclee prints on archival fine art papers are available in any size that allows the image width and height proportions to remain intact.. The signed and numbered Pieces of Ice photographs will be mounted between a dibond (aluminum composite) and 1/4" UV protected non glare acrylic, floating in a black wooden frame, prepared for hanging. The Prints in acrylic may also be ordered without the frame or simply the print itself for you to frame.

 

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Walter J. Vandervoort