Four areas of colour meet in one remarkable Antarctic photograph: pale sky, bright ice, textured water and deep shadow. David Burdeny's Mercators Projection, Antarctica, 2007 turns an enormous iceberg into a composition that almost looks drawn with a ruler.
The photograph belongs to Burdeny's North/South series. Its appeal is immediate, but give it a little time: the picture becomes more interesting when you stop looking for a perfectly symmetrical object and start following the boundaries of light.
How to read the four-part composition
The upper-right area is the iceberg's face. Its nearly vertical edge drops towards the waterline, while the lighter sky occupies the upper left. Across the bottom of the frame, the sea continues beneath both.
On the right, the iceberg's shadow darkens the water. On the left, small waves catch more light, revealing a silvery texture. The waterline and the edge of the shadow create the strong division that holds the image together.
The dark lower-right area is water in shadow, not a view through the sea of the iceberg's submerged base. Nor is it a mirror image of the white face above. Look at the surface texture: it continues across the lower part of the picture.
Geometry with wonderfully untidy details
At a glance, the photograph is all straight lines and broad blocks of tone. Up close, the ice face is irregular and richly textured. The sea is restless, and the sky has its own soft variation. That tension makes the picture rewarding: a very orderly composition contains surfaces that refuse to be perfectly neat.
The frame also withholds familiar scale markers. There is no person or house beside the ice. Compare that feeling with the 2017 Ferryland iceberg photographs, where buildings along the Newfoundland shore make the berg's size easier to grasp.
What an iceberg photograph can tell us
Icebergs begin as ice on land and enter the sea when they break away from glaciers or ice shelves. Much of a floating iceberg lies beneath the surface, but this photograph does not measure that hidden shape. NOAA's introduction to icebergs explains the distinction between their visible and submerged parts.
For photographers, the useful idea here is to pay attention to a subject's surroundings. A shadow can be as important to a composition as the object casting it. You do not need an Antarctic expedition to try that observation: a building beside water, a tree across snow or a rock on a beach can all create a second shape worth noticing.
For another close look at light and frozen surfaces, explore Kristina Makeeva's Lake Baikal photographs. To see how Antarctic images can preserve a very different kind of record, discover the historic negatives recovered at Scott's Cape Evans hut.
For another view of an iceberg’s relationship with water, explore Steve Mandel’s photographs above and below the surface.
A title borrowed from mapping changes the way we look
The title Mercators Projection invites viewers to think about division, surfaces and the organisation of space. Burdeny’s photograph is still an image of an iceberg, not a map or a literal illustration of how a cartographic projection works. The connection is suggestive: the meeting of strong horizontal and vertical features makes a natural scene feel unusually ordered.
Compare that overall geometry with the smaller irregularities. The water has texture, the ice has an uneven surface, and the boundaries are not the flawless lines of a diagram. Those details keep the composition from becoming merely abstract. The photograph gains much of its interest from the tension between a clear arrangement and the material that refuses to be perfectly regular.
The photograph turns one view of a three-dimensional iceberg into a remarkably organised flat composition. Its visible face tells us little about the full underwater shape, yet offers plenty to examine above the surface: edges, shadows, texture and the meeting of colour fields. Burdeny’s named work gives those choices a particular author and moment. Return from the overall symmetry to the smaller irregularities and the ice becomes tangible again.
Sources, photography and further reading
Original feature and image attributions:
Incredible composition and timing. The reflection creates an almost surreal sense of balance—an amazing example of both nature's beauty and David Burdeny's talent.
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