These pictures are from the construction of Ice Castle, a tourist attraction built behind a resort in Provo Utah. They are formed through the same process as a glacier, but their growth is drastically accelerated by human intervention.

I find a strong irony in the construction of them. These man made spectacles are mimicking naturally occurring environments that we are simultaneously destroying.  There is a tension between a human made structure and the impermanence of ice as a material. A sense of time different from our human timescale. Ice is a mineral, same as any other rock, and just like this castle of ice eventually melted, eventually so will the castles of stone. This change happens with and without humans. Humans interact, use and work with the landscape. We are the supporting characters that aid in the description of the place. The depiction of the humans helps date the images as a reference point in history, in a thought that this site might not be able to support an Ice Castles in the near future.

editor : Ecaterina Rusu