The Art of Impermanence: Photographing Glaciers Before They Melt into Memory
Welcome to another captivating photo essay, this time by Steve Giovinco. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to comment below and, if you're interested, share your photo essay with us. Your perspectives add valuable dimensions to our collective exploration.
What if photography wasn’t just about capturing beauty, but about preserving what’s disappearing?
Every long-exposure photograph Steve Giovinco takes captures a moment of beauty that might not exist tomorrow. The Arctic is changing faster than we can fully understand, and photography is one way to document what is disappearing. His images are are evidence of a world in transition.
Steve has spent years photographing Greenland’s glaciers at night, standing alone in the darkness, watching ice break apart under the Northern Lights.
The process is slow, meditative, and sometimes dangerous. Shooting in near-total darkness, he relies on intuition, long exposures, and natural light from the moon and aurora to reveal details the eye cannot see. Climate change is often discussed in numbers and projections, but here, it is visible in real time.
A camera can freeze time—but it can’t stop glaciers from melting.
Vanishing Glaciers: A Night Photography Exploration of Climate Change
My work captures the intersection of art, time, and climate change. Vanishing Glaciers is a photographic series documenting the fragile Greenlandic landscape at night, where ice melts in near silence under the Northern Lights. These photographs are both poetic and urgent—offering a meditation on beauty while serving as a stark reminder of the environmental crisis unfolding in real time.
This project is inspired by my long-standing interest in impermanence and the changing natural world. Drawing from the aesthetics of Hudson River School painters and the atmospheric depth of cinema, I aim to create images that feel both monumental and fleeting. My travels to Greenland, supported by 2016 and 2021 American-Scandinavian Foundation grants, reinforced my desire to capture these landscapes before they disappear.
Using extreme long-exposure techniques—often lasting two hours or more—I photograph the Arctic landscape in complete darkness, relying on intuition to frame my shots. These scenes are illuminated only by the Aurora Borealis, the moon, or stars, creating an ethereal, dreamlike effect. Because the images are made under conditions where the human eye can barely see, they reveal a reality that is both natural and impossible—sharp, detailed, and heightened beyond what is perceptible in real-time.
Each photograph tells a story of transformation. In one image, an iceberg fractures under its own weight, marking the irreversible shift of climate change. In another, an ice field glows softly under the aurora, a reminder of the Arctic’s quiet but ongoing collapse. Through conversations with Inuit communities and climate scientists, I have gained deeper insights into the rapidly shifting landscapes and the human impact on these fragile environments.
This work has been exhibited in galleries and institutions in the U.S. and internationally, with a growing audience in both the art and environmental communities. Beyond exhibitions, I see these images as a catalyst for discussion—engaging conservationists, researchers, and the public in conversations about sustainability and loss.
Photography has the ability to document, but it can also act as a mirror, reflecting deeper truths. I want these images to be both beautiful and unsettling—to draw viewers in with their haunting stillness while reminding them of the urgency of climate change. My goal is not just to capture the Arctic as it is but to preserve a version of it that soon may not exist.
Making these images is an immersive experience. Standing in the Arctic night, feeling the landscape more than seeing it, I become attuned to the rhythm of nature as well as terror. The resulting photographs evoke both wonder and loss—offering a glimpse of a world that is slipping away.
Your work captures both the majesty and fragility of Greenland’s vanishing glaciers. How do you balance creating images that are visually stunning while ensuring they also convey the urgency of climate change without romanticizing loss?
I’ve always been captivated by remote locations and specifically Greenland—its silent glaciers and vast expanses of ice. I’m mindful not to simply aestheticize what’s disappearing. Instead, I try to frame the scene so there’s a tension between beauty and vulnerability. For me, it’s about letting the landscape show the stillness, the isolation, and the subtle marks of human-induced change. This way, the viewer sees something stunning and serene, but if you look a little closer, the cracks are there—the broken ice floes, the receding glacier lines—signaling the urgency of the moment. Also, I feel in the eerie, otherworldly scenes, there is an undercurrent of tension and change.
You mention that making these images is both meditative and terrifying. Can you share a particularly intense moment you experienced while photographing in the Arctic night—perhaps an encounter with extreme weather, wildlife, or an unexpected challenge?
As mentioned, it is quite beautiful walking alone at night, as if in a dream. But several times, I wondered if I could make it. One time, I hiked about six hours to the edge of the glacier, but it began to rain, and since there were mountainous conditions, I was unsure if the trail would turn to mud, making it impossible to return. Another time, I pitched my tent, but winds came and almost knocked it down in the night; another, I decided to hike a mountain one way, but to save time, since it was getting dark, I saw an alternative option on my map. As I headed down, I realized there was no real path at all, and I had to scale rocks and gaps to make it down.
You draw inspiration from Hudson River School painters and filmmakers like Michelangelo Antonioni. How do their artistic approaches influence your composition choices, and how do you translate their sensibilities into long-exposure night photography?
I am drawn to Hudson River School painters because of the vast, luminous landscapes, and where nature is grand and contemplative,I try to integrate that sense of expansiveness, especially in how I frame the horizon or let the sky dominate a large portion of the composition. From Michelangelo Antonioni, I saw silences and the emotional weight of a single, lingering image—how emptiness or minimal action is powerful. In long-exposure night photography, these influences come together in a single moment that feels suspended in time. The camera’s extended shutter captures elements the naked eye can’t see—soft transitions of light, barely perceptible shifts of ice. These lingering exposures, I hope, convey a stillness that invites viewers to linger on the landscape’s nuanced details and, in turn, reflect on the sweeping changes happening there.
