I took these pictures in early 2000. In most cases, the location is Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, located at the geographic South Pole in Antarctica. The rest of the photos were taken around McMurdo Station, a waystation on the coast of Antarctica for travellers en-route to the Pole and other stations.

The South Pole station sits on about two miles of ice, placing it at nearly 10,000 feet of altitude. It is a completely flat, featureless ice wasteland, where the only scenery is wind-carved patterns in the ice (sastrugi), simple and futuristic man-made structures, and a quickly-changing sky which serves up haloes, sun dogs, aurorae, and cloud patterns quite different than those seen in most "normal" places.

Due to the high altitude, low humidity, clean air and remoteness of the site, the South Pole is a premier site for astrophysical, atmospheric, seismic and other research. My three trips involved work on the AMANDA experiment, leaving me little time to create works of art other than these photos. But the austere landscape and other-worldly configurations of scientific and construction equipment featured in these photographs have definitely influenced my paintings.

Click here for technical details on how these images and Web pages were created.

All images Copyright (C) 2000 by John Jacobsen. All rights reserved. You must have the artist's explicit permission in order to use these images.

These photos are for sale as C-type prints or digital ink-jet prints. Watch this space or please contact me for further information.