Ice Houses

Left: 'Untitled #1' - Catherine Opie
Right Top: 'Spider Island' - Scott Peterman Right Bottom: 'Kents Landing' - Scott Peterman

About 5 or 6 years ago I was browsing Amazon.com and I came across a book of photographs by Catherine Opie. The book was called 'Skyways and Icehouses'. I put it on my wish list where its remained ever since. When I first found the book it was listed at something like $25.00. Well, now it's available only as a collectable and the minimum price I've seen anywhere for the same book , and thats for a used copy, is about $88.00. So I'm kicking myself I didn't buy it when I first found it. Because I still love her Icehouse photographs. Opie took the photographs as part of a project she did during a yearlong residency at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I understand that the Icehouse photographs were exhibited in a very large format which must have made the experience of standing beside them really incredible.

A few years later I came across the Ice Shack photographs of Scott Peterman. Again the photographs have been exhibited in a large format: 30" x 38 1/2" according to an article in Art in America magazine written by Melissa Kuntz.

I love the vast whiteness of the landscape, the minimalist ice shack structures. These photographs embody for me what I find so beautiful about winter.

Siberian Wood Houses

These photographs are from a gorgeous collection taken by Russian digital artist Vlad Gerasimov.I'd actually visited Vlads website Vladstudio.com in the past as he's always had an interesting collection of desktop wallpapers available for download. But I just recently discovered that he's posted a huge number of his photographs of old Siberian wooden architecture on his website as well. Mr Gerasimov lives in Irkutsk in central Siberia and is able to drive to nearby towns to capture the images as he describes, before the buildings become history. The amount of detail in the wooden architecture is incredible especially when you think about the harsh climate that the buildings have existed in.