Ice Entities 2021

The original

In January 2020, I happened to pass by a large puddle that had formed in several potholes of a gravel road. Some branches and leaves had fallen into the water. Then the cold had come, and now they formed fascinating structures together with the numerous cracks in the frozen water. Since I have always had a weakness for abstract motifs and happened to have my macro lens with me, I eagerly photographed them in dusk’s waning light. I still remember well how I stood there, half crouching, pointing the camera downwards and over the puddle with outstretched arms, slowly searching for motifs. That must have looked pretty funny to outside passersby. Fortunately, I was alone – or would have been if it weren’t for the Ice Entities.

At home at the computer, I made an astonishing discovery. There were structures in the ice that reminded me of grimacing faces, fascinating and eerily beautiful in their own way, often harsh, sometimes funny, always elusive. The Ice Entities were discovered. To this day, they remain one of my favorite projects.

At the time, I thought this discovery was a singular event. I had no hope of discovering any more ice entities. But when winter struck again last January, I found to my astonishment that there are other ice creatures – and much larger ones. These do not live in the macro realm. On the contrary, some of them are several meters tall. They do not live in puddles but in frozen and snow-covered lakes. Although outwardly they are clearly different from their smaller counterparts, a distant relationship is easy to recognize.

As with the first series of photos, I only helped the Ice Entities come into the world by darkening and brightening individual image areas. No pixels were moved, and none were removed – except for a sensor spot here and slight cropping there.

Well, here they are then, the Ice Entities v2.0, the Ice Entities 2021. Enjoy your trip to the icy realms of faces and shadows and ghosts in the chimney.