Is it fate or fortune that Camille’s last name is Seaman? It’s clear that her days are spent on the sea. Over the sea. Dreaming about the sea. But in particular a burden that the sea bears, that of icebergs. Her two galleries, The Last Icebergs, are as haunting as the title. Her commentary on some of the ideas behind the way she approaches an iceberg is revealing and moving. As if bergs weren’t moving enough. She treats them like ancestors, family members, and names them as such.

Some of the images are sad, all of them stunning. This is an image-heavy post, even for FORTPORT standards. If you find yourself craving more, which you might, head over to Camille Seaman’s site and check out all her galleries. Does this woman ever take bad photographs?

Camille is also a 2011 TED fellow and commented recently “The Last Iceberg is one piece of a larger project entitled “Melting Away” which documents the polar regions of our planet, their environments, life forms, history of human exploration and the communities that work and live there.”

“The Last Iceberg chronicles just a handful of the many thousands of icebergs that are currently headed to their end. I approach the images of icebergs as portraits of individuals, much like family photos of my ancestors. I seek a moment in their life in which they convey their unique personality, some connection to our own experience and a glimpse of their soul which endures.”

“Nick Cave once sang, “All things move toward their end.” Icebergs give the impression of doing just that, in their individual way much as humans do; they have been created of unique conditions and shaped by their environments to live a brief life in a manner solely their own. Some go the distance traveling for many years slowly being eroded by time and the elements; others get snagged on the rocks and are whittled away by persistent currents. Still others dramatically collapse in fits of passion and fury.”

“Children of B15-A I, Ross Sea, Antarctica”
Her short caption assignes context to these wandering yet diminishing giants. Their source remains, while they sail north to their end on currents and winds. The story here is epic, considering the water contained in these ‘children’ can be as old as 150,000 years.