'Everyone is a visitor in the Antarctic: no one belongs. One or two secretive lichens aside, there is no life away from the ocean; too far straying from the life support of the sea and all animal life perishes. Nature makes it abundantly plain that this is no place for humankind, and that our presence on the sterile frozen continent is a temporary pass, as unwelcome and inappropriate as on the moon.'

This outstanding collection of photographs from one of New Zealand's most pre-eminent artists, Grahame Sydney, pays homage to the Antarctic landscape.

At the invitation of Antarctica New Zealand, Grahame Sydney travelled to Antarctica in November 2003, and again in October 2006. His photographs reveal an extraordinary terrain, which at first glance appears to be devoid of all colour, warmth or comfort. White Silence, a title drawn from the 1902–1903 diary entry of Edward Wilson, celebrates the rare flashes of beauty found in the bleakest, most inhospitable region of Earth.

Author Biography

Grahame Sydney is one of New Zealand's major artists, best known for his glorious landscapes of Central Otago. Born in Dunedin in 1948, Sydney gained a BA from the University of Otago, worked as a secondary school teacher and travelled overseas before embarking on a full-time artist career in 1974. Working in oils, watercolours, tempera, etchings and lithographs, his paintings have been widely exhibited and are held in private and public collections around the world. In 2003 he was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to painting.