Description

Artist Statement by Dustin Ferguson

In the heart of the Columbia Icefields, I stood before what once was vast—ice that stretched beyond sight, now receding into memory. Captured in monochrome, this image bears no warmth, no comfort. The glacier is still white, but its abundance feels hollow. Bleak. Weathered.

The Silence of Retreat is a meditation on erosion—of landscapes, of time, of certainty. The glacier’s slow disappearance is both a geological truth and a human metaphor. Is this the cost of our interference, or simply nature’s rhythm? Either way, the result is the same: what once stood strong now fades.

The photograph is quiet, but not empty. It holds the weight of what’s been lost. Like a face aged by years, the ice bears the marks of time’s passage—cracks, shadows, absences. And yet, in that silence, there’s reverence. A kind of mourning. A kind of grace.

This is not just about climate or consequence. It’s about legacy. About how even the most enduring things—mountains, glaciers, people—are shaped and softened by time. And how, in the end, what remains is not the roar of collapse, but the hush that follows.