Michael Kienitz
The first thing viewers notice about Michael Kienitz’s new photo exhibit at the Chazen Museum of Art is the colors.
“Blue Moon, Falljokull, South East Iceland, January 2018” is an interior shot of an ice cave, the textured walls shot through with splinters of light, displaying an array of blues — from azure to sapphire to dark navy. With the aid of an ice axe, climber and guide Einar Rúnar Sigurðsson is seen making his way up a steep, frozen incline. His diminutive form is framed by a halo, dwarfed by the massive ice expanses.
“Blue Moon, Falljokull” is one of 30 images printed on recyclable aluminum that make up Iceland’s Vanishing Beauty: Photography by Michael Kienitz, which opens Sept. 14 in the Chazen’s Leslie and Johanna Garfield Galleries. The show is drawn from more than 14,000 photos the Madison-based photographer has shot in Iceland over the past five years.
Michael Kienitz
Ice Cave Entrance at Sunrise, South East Iceland.
Kienitz’s exhibit also contains drone video footage, shot over the past four years, which provides context for some of the photos on display.
The image of the climber is bittersweet, says Kienitz, because it shows humankind as small and “feeble” in the face of nature’s towering majesty. But the stunning exhibit also illustrates human encroachments on Iceland’s ice caves and glaciers, which some experts believe could disappear in fewer than 80 years.
“I hope my photos will engage people in what’s going on,” says Kienitz. “I hope the natural beauty will draw them in, that they come to understand that such beauty is vanishing, and that we need to do something about it.”
Kienitz is no stranger to photographing natural wonders and the people who sometimes threaten them. Currently an electronic imaging instructor at UW-Madison’s department of professional development, he has been a photojournalist for 46 years.
His work has ranged from documenting evictions of the poor in Milwaukee as part of author and Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond’s 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City to covering life in war-torn countries of Afghanistan and Lebanon. For eight years he documented the work of nonprofit agency Working Capital for Community Needs, which provides micro-loans to women who lack access to credit in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Ecuador and Peru.
Michael Kienitz
Svinafellsjokull Glacial Tongue.
Kienitz has won multiple photography awards and his work has been featured in major publications, including Life, Newsweek and Time. While living in New York in the mid-1970s he worked for artist Andy Warhol and was house photographer for the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
He first traveled to Iceland in the summer of 2013 when he attended a medical conference with his wife, Dr. Beverly Kienitz, a neurologist and assistant professor at the UW School of Medicine. He was so intrigued by the country and photos he saw of the ice caves taken in winter that he began visiting on a regular basis.
“I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been there in the past five years,” Kienitz says. “Last year, in fact, I had to stop going because I had exceeded my six-month annual stay limit.”
Winter is a much tougher time to visit Iceland due to the frozen terrain and high winds that can gust up to 160 miles per hour, the photographer says. But it’s the best time to view the glaciers and the ice caves, which take on the brilliant blue hues seen in his photographs.
Provided you know how to traverse the terrain — and Kienitz has trained in ice climbing — it’s also a safer time to visit the ice caves. But Kienitz notes that climate change and tourism are taking a toll on the captivating glacial landscapes. “There are more hovercrafts and helicopter concessions catering to tourists coming to Iceland,” says Kienitz. “It used to be that Iceland was a destination for nature lovers, hikers and adventurers. Now we’re seeing a lot of rich people who just want to do something they’ve never done before.”
Kienitz says he hopes the exhibit will foster an appreciation of the value of preserving these beautiful landscapes. But he doesn’t see any easy answers: “I am as guilty as anyone of human encroachment, and I don’t really know how we’re going to stop climate change from destroying one of the world’s healthiest and most beautiful environments.”
Iceland’s Vanishing Beauty: Photography by Michael Kienitz runs through Feb. 3 at the Chazen Museum of Art on the UW campus. A preview reception and lecture are scheduled for Sept. 13, 5:30 p.m.
