feature Documentary, 90 min.
2025

Directed by Corina Gamma
Produced by Danielle Giuliani and Patrick Merkle
tellfilm Production

ICEMAN chronicles the life and legacy of climate researcher Konrad Steffen, whose work on climate change led to his tragic end — claimed by the very ice he devoted his life to studying.

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In August 2020, the world learned that Konrad Steffen, a respected and well known Swiss-American polar scientist, had vanished on Greenland Ice Cap. The news sent ripples through the scientific community and beyond. How could a man so attuned to the Arctic simply disappear into it? If anyone understood the dangers of the nature of the ice, it was Konrad Steffen. Tall, bearded, and magnetic in presence, “Koni,” as friends called him, embodied the essence of the polar explorer – driven by a limitless curiosity, pushing boundaries, forever reaching deeper into the ice. For three decades he studied Greenland’s ice cap, deciphering its slow surrender to climate change. Institutions, scientists and governments were drawn to his insights and sought his knowledge. What force had first pulled him to the polar regions? How had he risen to such prominence that those shaping the world’s future turned to him for guidance? Through the voices of those who knew him best – colleagues, friends, and family, all weaving together the portrait of a man and his obsession. They takes us back to Greenland, to the place that both fascinated and haunted him. And in a cruel twist of fate, tinged with poetry, the ice he spent his life studying became his final resting place, a stark testament to the very force he spent his life trying to understand.

Swiss Distributor: Frenetic Films

Funded by:

Zürcher Filmstiftung
SRF Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen / SRG SSR
Swiss Polar Institut
UBS Kulturstiftung
Dätwyler Stiftung
Else von Sick Stiftung
Volkart Stiftung
Crowdfunding

Sila Diaries is a selection of photographs taken in the most Northern inhabited region of Greenland, around the settlements of Qaanaaq and Siorapaluk. In Greenlandic, the meaning of the word “Sila” is multifaceted, such as weather, consciousness, breath and the universe. The multiple meanings merge human responsibilities with the course of nature. Many families, who live in the remote Arctic communities, survive predominantly on subsistence hunting and fishing. But with the changing climate and altering weather patterns their food source, income and long established culture are greatly affected.

This series of photographs, along with the feature documentary film SILA and the Gatekeepers of the Arctic, were on view at the HELMHAUS Museum in Zürich, Switzerland.  HELMHAUS EXHIBIT

For more information on the documentary visit: SILA and the Gatekeepers of the Arctic

© CORINA GAMMA
Interiors in Qaannaq and Siorapaluk, Greenland

© CORINA GAMMA, Kids playing in Nuuk, Greenland

Riding the Big Ferris Wheel
© Corina Gamma, 2007.
4 minute video/sound projection
Violin sounds by Lorenz Gamma

The video is a composite of recordings outside of Disneyland near Los Angeles. It projects the state of mind of a temporary happiness, where the thrill of a ferris wheel ride becomes a pacifier and impedes of never achieving fulfillment, never progressing, and never reaching the yearned-for crescendo.

Review by ArtSlant

Projection installation at d.e.n. contemporary Gallery, Los Angeles, California

SYMBIOSIS
© Corina Gamma, 2008.
8 minute loop, video/sound installation on three monitors.

Looking through a kaleidoscope transforms my surroundings into the innocent world of a child. It provides the comfort of symmetry and perfect equilibrium. Most of the visual content in this video composite are taken around my neighborhood in Los Angeles, where roosters roam next to the rumbling freeway and wild parrots dangle above busy streets. All these forms of life exist as one organism and become part of a larger symbiosis.

Monitor Installation exhibited at
OVERTONES GALLERY, Los Angeles, CA

ArtSlant

AN EERIE TAKE ON LEISURE

by Catherine Wagley

Corina Gamma takes an unnerving look at LA recreation in her current solo exhibition at d.e.n. contemporary. A show of relatively small, sleek photographs of amusement parks could come off as a piquant gesture, especially with a whimsical title like (un)Restricted Pleasure. But Gamma’s discreet representations of carnival rides and suburban developments are compelling because of their sinister undercurrent.

Near the end of her first novel, The Voyage Out, Virginia Woolf describes light as “Unbroken by clouds” and “falling through the empty air . . . almost like a chill white frost over the sea and the earth.” The only sound is “a slight but continuous breathing which never ceased, although it never rose and never fell.” Woolf’s chilling scene, which occurs near the end of a leisure voyage turned disaster, creates a tense picture that nicely mirrors the mood of Gamma’s work.

Gamma, who does not digitally edit her images, waits until the sky is completely uninterrupted by light or clouds. Then, on the bleakest days possible, she shoots her photographs and her videos. The resulting images evoke an unbroken feeling of emptiness, despite their deceptively light and colorful subject matter. What makes the show at d.e.n. contemporary particularly unnerving is the slightly audible creaking sound coming from the videos in the back of the gallery. At first, the sound seems to be the sound of the hinges of the cars that lethargically sways back and forth in Gamma’s video, Riding the Big Ferris Wheel. But when the looped audio briefly lapses into a carnival tune and visitors realize that they are listening to a violin improvisation. The calculated nature of the creaking violin makes the exhibition take on leisure even more eerie, turning the tropes of amusement—festive rides and carnival music—into a penetratingly lonely experience.

-Catherine G. Wagley

02/03/08

These photographs were exhibited at D.E.N. contemporary gallery in Los Angeles and at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Larchmont, NY.

Limited Edition Prints
Print sizes: 19 x 19 inches, 28 x 28 inches and 48 x 48 inches.

View video installation: Riding the Big Ferris Wheel

These photographs portray family heirloom furniture and other objects that have been wrapped up and stored for decades. They explore the concept of sentiment, where by means of protecting these items, we attempt to hang on to old chapters, give value to lost generations and family history. These objects provide us with a false sense of security and permanence, but now write their own story and history as they are stowed away by a family who has long moved on.

Installation view of the exhibit at the Galerie Monika Wertheimer in Switzerland in 2013.

© Corina Gamma
After The Nightwatch
Limited Edition, Chromogenic Prints

Print Size: 85 x 85 cm (33 x 33 inches)
Paper size: 110 x 170 cm (43 x 66 inches)

“California Elegance” explores the California suburban landscape and the desire for an idyllic setting, which results in virgin land being altered.  Subsequently, it is transformed into a setting that resembles nothing like its past.

In the Sunshine of Neglect

Defining Photographs And Radical Experiments in Inland Southern California,
1950 To The Present

California Museum of Photography

January 19 – April 21, 2019
Imaginative experiment, open-eyed freedom, and personal odyssey. These are the subjects of In the Sunshine of Neglect: Defining Photographs and Radical Experiments in Inland Southern California, 1950 to the Present. Extreme freedoms are found at the margins. Inland Southern California is a region of four million people, but it is also a periphery on the edge of the LA basin. Consequently, established photographic artists and rising experimentalists have long used the area as a laboratory for experiment. In the Sunshine of Neglect is the first exhibition to survey this remarkable history. Along the way, these artists also present a statement of identity for an entire region. The exhibition features work by more than thirty-five artists including Kim Abeles, Ansel Adams, Lewis Baltz, Laurie Brown, Judy Chicago, Joe Deal, Lewis deSoto, John Divola, Christina Fernandez, Judy Fiskin, Robbert Flick, Corina Gamma, Anthony Hernandez, Sant Khalsa, Meg Madison, Richard Misrach, Chelsea Mosher, Kenda North, Mark Ruwedel, Allan Sekula, Julie Shafer, Julius Shulman, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Kim Stringfellow, Larry Sultan, and others.

Curator: Douglas McCulloh