Projects

visual artist

In 1903 my grandfather, John Colin Vaughan, a medical student from New York, joined the ill-fated Ziegler Polar Expedition, under the command of artist/photographer Anthony Fiala. They sailed to the Franz Josef Land Archipelago (now the western frontier of Russia) in an attempt to reach the North Pole. Their ship was crushed by ice, forcing them to subsist on the islands for two years. Three assaults at the Pole with dog and pony sledges failed, and the defeated men quarreled. The most striking paradox of this moment in arctic history is that while the camp raged with conflict, insubordination, and a mysterious death, Commander Fiala created photographs evoking an heroic story of progress, and beauty. And, he managed to shoot the first motion picture film in the arctic regions.

My journey began in 1996 with historical documents, and the many journals, photographs, films, and drawings that still survive. Inside these long silent testimonies I discovered another voyage—an inner voyage—one every bit as compelling as the life and death struggle in the frozen north.

This work has made me rethink how historical stories are told, and has taken me to the arctic, a place where light is born, where shadows have no density; and where darkness is as opaque as wood. Going to these landscapes I have learned to be quiet, allowing the place itself to reveal its histories left in the land and its objects.

I document the totality of this experience in many media: painting, installations, and filmmaking. In making this work I parallel the explorers’ contribution to the collective record-keeping which helps us understand what it is to be human.

Heddi

Vaughan

Fiala

© Heddi Vaughan Siebel 2010