Love in a cold climate

Dutch photographer René Koster has an unquenchable hunger for cold climates and going into the unexplored. He speaks to Chris Cheesman about his highly acclaimed Antarctica series.

- Chris Cheesman

René Koster’s love affair with Antarctica was triggered by his fascination for the work of photographer Frank Hurley, who famously documented Ernest Shackleton’s epic expedition to the South Pole (1914-17). The paradoxical allure of Earth’s coldest and windiest continent led René to take sail on a tall ship, the bark Europa, on a voyage that would cover 1,600 nautical miles after first setting sail from Argentina.

While Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, hit disaster when it became marooned on pack ice, fortunately no such calamity would befall René’s German-made vessel, despite it being of a similar vintage – it was built in 1911, the year in which Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen defeated Captain Robert Scott in the race to the South Pole.

It was Hurley’s photo of the Endurance’s predicament – combined with a keen interest in history and exploration – that set René on his Antarctica venture. ‘Hurley took the photo at night and used a flash. I felt like I was watching a negative,’ says René.

Like the most compelling stories from history, René’s images have an enduring quality. Taken in November-December 2004, they first found acclaim when they won an accolade in the Travel Photographer of the Year awards in 2006. More recently, the images experienced something of a renaissance with coverage of the project in the The Washington Post.

Dual formats

René worked in digital and film, taking some 2,000 pictures using a Kodak DCS-14N DSLR with Nikon 24-200mm lenses, and shooting Kodak Ektachrome E100VS and E100GX on a Mamiya 7 II.

The film option forced him to concentrate more on taking pictures and, as he says: ‘Think twice about it because films are still expensive and there is also money involved in developing them.’