Port Lockroy. The bones of giants are left over from years of large-scale whale-hunting operations in Antarctica. Since their flesh was rendered to make candles up until the nineteenth century, the invention of the electric lightbulb may well have saved the whales. 

Last month, we blogged about the yearlong trip that the photographer Magda Biernat and her husband, the illustrator Ian Webster, are taking from Antarctica to Alaska. We checked in with them last week, after the first stop of their journey—Antarctica. “Antarctica is contradictory: the world’s largest desert covered with frozen water, seemingly barren but teeming with wildlife,” Magda and Ian told me. “Antarctica is severe and dramatic. It’s hard not to wonder at its perfect stillness, but just as the silence becomes overwhelming a violent outburst occurs, like calving glaciers, the very occasional exploding iceberg, or a pod of orcas surfacing. It is the most unusual, dreamlike landscape we’ve ever seen. It was overwhelming, and we only touched a very small part of an entire continent.”

Click-through for a selection of Magda’s Antarctica photographs, with captions from the couple: http://nyr.kr/YaKwoX

Danco Island, Errera Channel. A gentoo penguin uses one of the penguin highways to make its way to the water. Penguins roost exclusively on bare rocks, severely limiting the number of potential nesting sites and making for long commutes. 

Jessie Wender:

On the last day of 2012, the photographer Magda Biernat-Webster and her husband, the illustrator Ian Webster, began a journey in Chile that they’re calling North via South: from Antarctica to Alaska. After landing in Santiago, Chile, via New York City via Williamsburg, they drove fifteen hundred miles south, through Chile, to catch a cruise boat headed to Antarctica, which will be the official starting point of their voyage. Over the coming months, we’ll be following their journey and publishing dispatches from road, boat, and plane.

Click-through for a selection of Magda’s photographs from Chile, with captions from the couple: http://nyr.kr/WefYVR

(Source: newyorker.com)