Antarctica, that icy wasteland and extreme environment at the ends of the earth, was - at the beginning of the 20th century - the last frontier of Victorian imperialism, a territory subjected to heroic and sometimes desperate exploration. Now, at the start of the 21st century, Antarctica is the vulnerable landscape behind iconic images of climate change. In this genre-crossing narrative Gould takes us on a journey to the South Pole, through art and archive. Through the life and tragic death of Edward Wilson, polar explorer, doctor, scientist and artist, and his watercolours, and through the work of a pioneer of modern anthropology and opponent of scientific racism, Franz Boas, Gould exposes the legacies of colonialism and racial and gendered identities of the time. Antarctica, the White Continent, far from being a blank - and white - canvas, is revealed to be full of colour. Gould argues that the medium matters and that the practices of observation in art, anthropology and science determine how we see and what we know. Stories of exploration and open-air watercolour painting, of weather experiments and ethnographic collecting, of evolution and extinction, are interwoven to raise important questions for our times. Revisiting Antarctica through the archive becomes the urgent endeavour to imagine an inhabitable planetary future.

Reveals the legacy of Victorian anthropology, art and science in contemporary understanding of our planet and makes an urgent plea for plans for an inhabitable planetary future

List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsNotes on AcronymsIntroductionList of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsNotes on AcronymsIntroductionAntarctica through Art and the Archive Atmosphere through Architecture Anthropos through Nomadic Subjects Biography through Zoegraphy Transposition through Refraction Art and Antarctica through Writing The Journey through the WritingPrologue Notes from the Field Glass ArchiveChapter One Elsewhere The Crippetts A Chapter of Antarctic History Evolution Notes and Queries Hints to Travellers Avant-Garde A View from Nowhere Archive as Field Analogy Immediacy Medium No More ElsewhereChapter Two Watercolour In the Open Air Notes towards a Lecture on Sketching The Weather Climate Control Horizon Permanent Colour Black and White Colour in Nature The History of Art Of Turnerian Topography Everything Wanders WatercoloursChapter Three Antarctica through the Archive Antarctica Curious Perspective The Grid and Globe The Antarctic Manual Observation Hill The Southern Journey X The South Pole The Observer and the Observed Interpretation Atmosphere Ekphrasis Through the ArchiveChapter Four The Colour of Water Understanding of the Colour of Water Typology The Study of Geography Natural History Pharmakon Silver Nitrate Fugitive Colour Diorama Climatron Twenty-First-Century Storm Cloud Participant Observation Air ConditioningChapter Five Where Else No Where Else Refractive Index Please Return Immediately Similarity-in-Difference The Hut and the Museum The View from Somewhere Rear-Guard Lantern Lecture Some Notes on Penguins But Things Have Turned out Otherwise Some Fragments of an Antarctic Archive HopeEpilogue The Arkive Ice Field NotesManuscriptsPrimary BibliographySecondary Bibliography