Description

They belong amongst the most fascinating regions of our planet: the eternal ice of the Polar regions and the hot, dry deserts. The extreme climatic conditions such as cold, darkness and wind, heat and drought create stunning natural spectacles, but have also wrought startling adaptations in plants, animals and people. Michael Martin has set out to achieve something never before accomplished: To produce a comprehensive comparison of these landscapes and habitats in a project which includes photography, a film and a book. To accomplish this feat, Michael Martin has been on the road for several years, often teamed with scientists and fellow photographers or camera teams. During the 35 gruelling and adventurous journeys which he has undertaken for the sake of the project, he has explored the vast expanses of ice and deserts. He has ridden his motorbike across the Sahara, the Namib and the Atacama, travelled with camels through the Takla Makan, traversed the ice of Greenland and Spitsbergen by dog sledge, flown by helicopter to the South Pole and the pristine expanses of Antarctica and reached the North Pole on skis. The structure of the project - book and film - into four parts was determined by Nature itself. This is because these extreme climate zones spread in four irregular belts around the globe: the Polar Regions north and south of the Arctic and Antarctic Circles respectively, the deserts stretching along the two tropics. Both readers and viewers get to go along on this journey, four times around the earth. Like pieces of a mosaic, the photos from the 24 different regions combine to create a comprehensive global picture.