Compton Gallery

Exploring the Arctic Seafloor:
Photographs by Chris Linder

July 11, 2009 - January 4, 2010

Cambridge, MA — Embark on an expedition to the bottom of an ice-covered ocean in the MIT Museum's Compton Gallery. Photographs, a 3-d model of the Arctic seafloor, and a multimedia kiosk comprise this exhibition about a historic Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) expedition during the International Polar Year. MIT/WHOI Joint Program alumnus, Chris Linder was the team photographer and developed the exhibition. Scientists, researchers, photographers, and a helicopter pilot all left Norway in July 2007 for a forty-day trip to the Arctic. Also on board were a variety of research equipment such as underwater robotic vehicles named Jaguar and Puma, water sampling devices, and CAMPER a large sampling sled that collected lava and other material from the seafloor.

The icebreaking ship Oden broke through ice to permit research equipment to be lowered into the ocean to depths up to 2 miles - for sample collecting, mapping and exploration. The international team of engineers and scientists gathered information about earthquakes, examined brilliantly colored microbes, and took a wide range of measurements of the environment.

Linder's beautiful photographs show, in his own words "the epic struggle between man and the environment." Using ingeniously invented robotic divers, the expedition explored the Gakkel Ridge, parts of which seethe with geysers escaping from beneath the ocean bottom. The luminosity of the photographs portray summer in the arctic when the sun never sets, but when the ice can also be at its most dangerous to humans. Ever shifting, the ice is a central character of this expedition and Linder provides an artful gaze on the substance that has kept the secrets of the deep sea for so long.

This exhibition was created by Chris Linder, with the collaborative assistance of The Field Museum and graphics professionals at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Funding for this exhibit was provided through the Live from the Poles grant, awarded by the National Science Foundation and the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

Learn more

Live from the Poles / Polar Discovery - The photos for this exhibition were taken as part of the Live from the Poles project. Read daily dispatches and see more photos from this expedition at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Polar Discovery Expedition 2 website.