Camille Lin | 2 June 2024
With a film camera, a National Geographic and some time to think, Thibaut Vergoz tried his hand at photography in his early twenties and became one of the first photographers to document the scientists’ daily lives at Concordia in 2015. “I find interest in turning 180° to see what’s behind the camera, if you type […]
The Kiruna airstrip in the Swedish Arctic. The photojournalist was following a mission to study the atmosphere called MAGIC, involving more than 80 European scientists and 20 research laboratories, including the British Antarctic Survey. Picture : Camille Lin
With a film camera, a National Geographic and some time to think, Thibaut Vergoz tried his hand at photography in his early twenties and became one of the first photographers to document the scientists’ daily lives at Concordia in 2015.
“I find interest in turning 180° to see what’s behind the camera, if you type penguin on Google, there are probably 15 million photos,” Thibaut Vergoz tells us. This photographer, who likes to use colour for documentaries, is renowned for having expanded the French Polar Institute’s photo library in 2015 to include Concordia – one of the most isolated scientific stations in the world. To reach the heights of Antarctica, he blended in with the Astrolabe’s users, Dumont-d’Urville’s summer campers on the continent’s west coast, then with the raid pilots climbing the ice cap and Concordia’s overwinterers. This mission was the culmination of a long journey that saw him consider himself a pro. “Any photographer will tell you that 80% of the job consists of making the photo possible. After that, the least you can do is make it technically successful.”
He borrowed his first tool – a silver process Olympus – from his father in his twenties, discovering photography through a man in his thirties. The latest had gone back to school, and was projecting photos taken during his travels some evening after school. His father’s camera gradually became his own. He took it on board the Marion Dufresne II in 2007 for a first mission with the French Polar Institute, then a 14-month scientific volunteer in Kerguelen. “There was always a National Geographic lying around in the huts. In general, you had time to read it 10 times”, he recalls.
Between two scientific manoeuvres, he exercised his eye by taking a series of pictures and developing them “the old-fashioned way” on the station. The laboratory was located in the building of the Centre national d’étude spatiale. “What’s more, it’s pretty easy to take snappy photos there.” Little by little, he changed his outlook, losing interest in the “postcard” adorned with penguins and albatrosses. What appeals to him are the everyday aspects of life for this human group in a micro-society.
In the Kerguelen archipelago, the ornithologists on Mailles Island live in a hut for several weeks to monitor the bird colonies before returning to the base for supplies and to report their data. Picture : Thibaut Vergoz
“But how do you make a living out of it?” He wondered after his 1st polar mission. He returned to an island, in Alaska with the University of Fairbanks, to lend a hand to ornithologists specialising in guillemots. This time he took a digital camera and a flash with him. “That’s when I realised the potential of the flash for reportage. Gaining in technicality, texture and nuance, he left for China, at his own expense, to document the daily life of a Mongolian minority. New projects were then set up with the support of the Zeppelin photographic agency.
In 2012, the CNRS and IRD ordered him a report on invasive species in New Caledonia. A series of contracts followed. Science&Avenir took an interest in natural hazards in Vanuatu Islands. He gained a foothold in the press and felt ready to approach the French Polar Institute for a second time, as a photographer reporter. As luck would have it, the photo library wanted to document the wide range of jobs that make up an Antarctic mission. “We started with a blank page.” The pressure was on. “There was a lot of money on the table and I couldn’t just turn in something average.”
Visit the ice core library, where a kilometre-long sample of ice is cut into several pieces. Picture : Thibaut Vergoz / CNRS / French Polar Institute
His images of Antarctica offered him a springboard and established his legitimacy as a photographer. They were published in the French and Swiss press, in the journal PNAS, at exhibitions, in archive documents, etc. “It’s my best-known reportage.” Scientific activity there is effervescent during summer time and sometimes unusual. “At Concordia, the scientists have installed a sauna in a specially converted wooden room, 90°C inside and -50°C outside…” we could read in his mission log.
In the dry cold, the equipment ran at idle. “Put them in a warm place and they start up again,” he assures us. Nor did they suffer from condensation, as on other “more difficult” assignments. In the Amazon rainforest of French Guiana, during a truce between gold-washer and legionnaires, Thibaut Vergoz accompanied a geographer specialising in illegal mining at the frontier with Brazil. “It was physically very difficult, and then you had to prepare the logistics, the insurance, the army authorisations… unlike in Antarctica where the Polar Institute plans everything, and everything is done for you.”
Camille Lin, Polar Journal AG
