INTO THE ICE - The MOSAiC expedition in pictures: Ice Journey to an Unknown World

The photo exhibition "INTO THE ICE - the MOSAiC expedition in pictures" was created in cooperation with the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). It invites visitors on a journey to another world. Museum guests drift along the route of the POLARSTERN.

At the northern end of the world lies an epicenter of climate change. What exactly is going on in the Arctic? How does the interplay between atmosphere and ice, ocean and life work there?  Under the leadership of the AWI, a team of institutions from 20 countries is taking on the challenge of deciphering these questions: with MOSAiC, the largest Arctic expedition in history will start in fall 2019. Supported by an international fleet of ships, helicopters and aircraft, the research icebreaker POLARSTERN will drift through the frozen ocean for a year. It follows in the footsteps of the FRAM, with which Fridtjof Nansen first ventured on this adventure. But more than 125 years have passed since then. And the Arctic has become a different place.

A red stripe on the floor sets the course and leads into snow-white and night-blue rooms. On display are motifs by the photographers Esther Horvath, Lianna Nixon, Jan Rohde, Steffen Graupner, Mario Hoppmann and Michael Gutsche, who were on board the POLARSTERN and documented the work of the researchers on board and in the camp installed next to it with measuring instruments on the ice floe. The selected photographs are emblematic of a walk-in memory of the MOSAiC expedition. They show sometimes documentary, sometimes almost poetic motifs from an almost deserted world.

Some of the photographs are staged in oversized illuminated frames, including images from the polar night. The light accents in the darkness make the polar landscape seem even more otherworldly. The motifs in the exhibition also include the photo of a polar bear mother with her cub, with which AWI photographer Esther Horvath won the World Press Photo Award in the environment category in 2020.  Museum guests can also immerse themselves in the impressions of the expedition by means of video recordings on a ten-meter-wide screen.

INTO THE ICE was funded by the Leibniz Research Museums Action Plan. The exhibition will be on view at the DSM from February 25 to July 31, 2022.

Tickets for guided tours can be booked at www.dsm.museum/ticket.

Printable image material for download can be found at www.dsm.museum/presse.