Campo de Piedra Pomez in Catamarca (Photo: Marcelo Gurruchaga)

The latest exhibition by photographer Marcelo Gurruchaga is a love letter to the power of nature and the glory of the Argentine landscape. The exhibition takes place in Palermo’s T-Bone restaurant, where sweeping shots of the Rio de La Plata accompany the daily carousel of pasta, pizza and empanadas.

Looking outside the restaurant window at bustling Av Santa Fé, it’s easy to forget the magnitude and the diversity of the Argentine countryside. The dense warren of streets in the capital is a total anathema to the intense, panoramic visions of Argentina that Gurruchaga presents in his show. Sweeping shots of unmarked countryside made up of intricate paths and weaving waterways are captured in an intense spectrum of colours. These photographs are dedications to an environment both fundamental to and threatened by human existence, serving as reminders of both human origins and footprints.

‘Tierra Madre’ (‘Mother Earth’) takes the themes of origin and light as its focus. The exhibition is the next step for an artist dedicated to portraying the enormity and magnitude of the natural world. Gurruchaga has worked in photography for over 30 years, teaching photography, graphic design and even architecture and design in the University of Buenos Aires, UADE and Belgrano. His key focus within his work is on portraying conservation and heritage issues through his photographs.

Gurruchaga’s previous shows, shot in far away locations like Antarctica, show a similar desire to capture the beauty of unsullied environments. However, these works are a deliberate homage to his birthplace and to human origins in nature.

“I wanted to show our purest origins” says Gurruchaga, “It is this type of landscape which appeals to me most; the insolation, infinite landscapes like the Pampas. These are the places that attract me”.

This reference to insolation, the science of light measurement hints at a deeper interest in light which runs throughout this exhibition. Gurruchaga’s respect for the natural world and our place within it is evident. Also obvious, however, is his fascination for light and the photographic method, evidenced in the glorious colours achieved in his images.

“Achieving the intensity is about a method of exposure to achieve the right measure of light, above all, the theme of photometry” he says.

Gurruchaga’s interest in insolation and photometry – the name given to the science of the measure of light – shows a deep respect for, nature and photography. It is this obsession with and respect for the enormity and complexity of his subject matter that takes his work beyond the realm of a Windows screen saver.

Opening night on Wednesday 4^th July finds Gurruchaga amidst a swarm of eulogising fans. The evening is an intimate affair and the conversation is flowing – due in part to a seemingly endless supply of empanadas and red wine. Beaming guests sit at tables and weave between waiters and dinner parties to admire the array of canvases lining the walls.

While an unconventional setting for a photography exhibition, it is still possible to get a good look at all the pictures without getting too involved in a first date or sitting on someone’s lap. It does take more concentration to connect to art while dodging a dinner service, but the atmosphere is relaxed and accessible. Plus it’s easy to find a coffee after the show – just ask the waitress whose path you’re blocking.

A pole of inaccessibility is the point in any landmass that is hardest to reach. Every continent has one, and in 1958 a Soviet exploration team reached the remotest of them all – Antarctica’s. At an altitude of some 3,700m, the average temperature there is negative 60 degrees making it the coldest place on earth.

In proper Soviet fashion, they made the 2,100km journey in ten giant ‘Pingvin’ treaded machines, and left behind them an abandoned research station topped with the bronze bust of Vladimir Lenin. It still surveys the snows.

Antarctica, perhaps more than any other continent, places our human world against the stark backdrop of infinite nature. A new book of photography, ‘Antarctica: the Colours of the Cold Desert’, offers a glimpse into this juxtaposition.

As the photographer, Buenos Aires local Marcelo Gurruchaga, writes in the introductory essay: “In a very partial and limited way, the photographs represent the enormity of this continent that holds within it the greatness of the infinite and the anguish of the finite.”

“My trip to Antarctica,” he goes on, “started with a question and ends with the certitude that here, in the most deserted desert on the planet, we are but a speck in nature.” The photos themselves are brilliant. “The colours of Antarctic minute to minute,” he goes on, “ice, sunsets and dawns, blue skies and clouds and fog create a dazzling pallet.” And flipping through the pictures of these desolate and beautiful places does perhaps give one a glimmer of this feeling.

While the introduction is short, it is a rich blend of personal narrative and historical fact (my only critique being that the book would benefit from a couple more such pieces of writing). In it we learn that the way the world has dealt with Antarctica reflects the author’s own awe when confronting the immensity of nature.

The 1961 Antarctic treaty ensures that, “in Antarctica, only peaceful activities can take place, use of nuclear energy is prohibited, and there is a commitment towards natural resource conservation and preservation.” And like no other place in the world, Gurruchaga writes, “there is a sense of cooperation between and coexistence amongst people of all nationalities.”

French existentialist philosopher and novelist Albert Camus thought that, when placed against the blank indifference of nature, all the absurdities of human existence are brought into sharper focus. He believed that, even becoming aware of it, we could never escape the silliness of our condition. But I choose to believe, with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, that seeing our world placed against the profundity of nature can give us the insight put aside the things that really don’t matter.

Living in Buenos Aires, immersed in the traffic and the boliches, the steep walls rising up around you, it’s easy to forget that anything else exists, that anything else matters. This is, as V.S. Naipaul said, “an overwhelming metropolis,” tautological even, with its own value system, its own truths, things we might do well to question.

Unchanging in the face of all that nature, Vladimir’s bronze countenance will forever project the sad dreams of a fallen empire and a failed ideology onto the indifferent ice. But we all carry our Lenins with us, the beliefs we should have questioned long ago. By offering a glimpse into the vastness, ‘Antarctica’  reminds us to question what they are.

Antarctica: the Colours of the Cold Desert is available at bookstores throughout Buenos Aires. It will be officially released at a presentation and party at 6:30pm, 26th August, at the Argentine University of Business (UADE), Lima 717.