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Out in the Cold: photographing the poles

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Out in the Cold


A photojournalist’s eyewitness account of the world’s most inhospitable regions, slowly melting before our eyes, is presented in a limited-edition handcrafted book


A pproaching mid-life, South African cameraman Danie Ferreira heeded the call of the wild. He left behind his career in television and trained his eye towards another challenge: the Arctic and Antarctic.

There, Danie found a close-knit community of fellow ice chasers, and with every passing nautical mile, he fell more in love with the landscape around him – an unforgiving, yet awe-inspiring terrain which is sadly, and rapidly, disappearing due to climate change.

Danie’s extraordinary encounters over 30 years are collected for the first time in Out in the Cold. This limited-edition luxury collector’s item, produced by fine-art book specialists Hurtwood, is divided into two stunning hand-crafted volumes – North and South – with each book handbound with special silk screen, and most remarkably, overstamped and certified at the geographical poles.

Its design uses rhythmic white space, double page spreads, and hand-drawn notes to emulate the experience of being an explorer in the region, while its finish mimics that of a glacial shimmer.

Across its two volumes, Danie weaves written reflections of six expeditions with his poetic photography, transporting the reader to Svalbard, Greenland and the Canadian High Arctic in the North, to his times as a meteorological observer in the South, cutting through mirrored seas on the Cape to Cape route, and finally a spirited race to the South Pole.

The wildness becomes the familiar in Danie’s intimate photos: extraordinary close-up shots of polar bears and seals, among other creatures, reveal the humanity in nature, while his trusty sidekicks, the snow dogs shepherding voyagers to safety, are honoured beautifully within the book.


Its design uses rhythmic white space, double page spreads, and hand-drawn notes to emulate the experience of being an explorer in the region


For Danie, the expeditions are as much emotional as they are physical. He finds great splendour in the landscape, but his admiration is mixed with grief. It is not the threat of frostbite or falling through a crevasse which daunts him, it’s the looming, very real, possibility of a Blue Ocean event in the coming years which hovers over his journeys.

Through its striking photography and intimate observations into life on the ice, readers will be hard pressed not to fall in love with the remote regions Danie holds dear – regions melting before his camera lens, plunging all of us, finally, into the great unknown. Out in the Cold is a book for our times.


It’s the looming, very real, possibility of a Blue Ocean event in the coming years which hovers over his journeys.


DANIE FERREIRA is a South African photographer, cinematographer, and producer.

His love affair with the ice began at age 19, when in 1983 he packed little more than some warm clothes and an entry-level SLR camera in his rucksack, and embarked on what was to become a 14-month voyage to the very bottom of the world, to Antarctica, where he worked as a meteorological observer.

Inspired, thereon, to become a photojournalist, he returned to his home country to study journalism and geography.

Television is where he ended up, and for nearly 30 years, he presided over what eventually became the most prolific independent studios in South Africa.

Despite his career success, Danie could no longer deny his calling and, in 2014, he picked up his camera and bade farewell to the corporate world for a life spent chasing ice.

Over the past decade, Danie has filmed in Antarctica, Svalbard, East Greenland and the Canadian High Arctic.

One of Danie’s keenest interests is the human-canine relationship and in 2016, he directed Ice Dogs, a documentary about Greenland’s native dogs used in polar exploration for thousands of years.

Out in the Cold is his first book-length collection of photographs. He is currently working on a second book, Vanishing Ice, which will delve further into the impacts of climate change on our planet.


Over the past decade, Danie has filmed in Antarctica, Svalbard, East Greenland and the Canadian High Arctic


NOTES ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

The two volumes of Out in the Cold (North and South) are each 364 pages long, round backed and bound in a silver dupion silk with a bluish lustre, while cover details are foil blocked in a silver blue foil and the book edges are hand-painted metallic silver.

Each volume is printed on one of the world’s finest papers, Mohawk Superfine, and fully hand-bound at Ludlow Bookbinders, one of the UK’s last traditional hand-binderies.

The two volumes are housed in a spectacular handmade, silk-screened presentation box, lined in shimmering blue paper with metallic foil blocking to the base.

The silk screening on the front of the box is created by Lorenz Boegli, a unique craftsman based in Switzerland, who mixes natural materials with unusual printing methods to create extraordinary iridescent prints.

Out in the Cold will be available from 18 October 2022

£2,500

Words: Staff

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