Overview
This recording was created for Te Papa’s in-gallery audio tour.
Transcript:
Athol McCredie
This is not a photograph of Antarctica. It depicts a diorama at the Antarctic Centre, in Christchurch.
The cliffs are a painted backdrop, along with the penguins in the distance on the right. The figures posed stiffly in their red jackets in the foreground are mannequins.
Anne Noble, the photographer, did actually visit Antarctica in 2002 – the year before she took this photograph. And while she was there, she began to think about how our ideas about Antarctica have mostly been formed through photography.
So rather than add to the body of familiar, repetitive imagery, she decided to consider how the continent has been represented. She explores the frozen continent’s hold on us as a location in the imagination.
Her Antarctic photographs prompt us to consider the differences between the real and the imagined, and what sort of role photography plays in the distinction.