Antarctica: The Frozen Desert | Photographs by Vegar Abelsnes

1st Street Gallery at WTRSHD will present *“Antarctica: The Frozen Desert,”* a new body of fine art photography by Vegar Abelsnes, opening September 26th, 2026, and on view September through November. The exhibition marks a deliberate turn in Abelsnes’ photography; after more than two decades of working in a commercial and advertising capacity, he has embarked on a career as a photo and field guide in the polar regions. The exhibit features work generated over 6 *voyages to the* Antarctic Peninsula. He is returning to Antarctica in January and will add the Falklands and South Georgia to his list of destinations to guide and photograph.

Traveling to some of the most remote and inhospitable coastlines on Earth, Abelsnes has photographed a landscape that exists almost entirely outside of human time. The ice in these images began forming millions of years ago, while Homo sapiens have only existed for roughly 300,000 years. Defined by such a scale, Antarctica is less a place than a record — vast, indifferent, treacherous, and staggeringly beautiful, holding a kind of cosmic truth that Abelsnes says is more important now than ever before.