Salix Polaris came out of Anna Sielka’s journey to the Polish Polar Station on the island of Spitsbergen in 2012. The book takes its name from a species of willow that survives in the Arctic climate. The Polish photographer compares nature’s persistence to explorers’ determination to return to the Arctic. “What is it that attracts them? A quest for mystery? Need for alienation? Divine void, holy purity, distinction from the rest of the planet? Or is it simply fascination with the world?” Sielka contemplates these questions as the Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, with whom her work shares similarities, had done centuries before.
Salix Polaris is available from the artist’s website.