Asia Society Presents
“Rivers of Ice: Vanishing Glaciers of the Greater Himalaya”
Now through August 15, 2010
-By Matt Mulholland

Since the first recorded expedition to reach the summit of Everest in 1921, less than 3,000 individuals have reached the apex of the world’s highest peak. David Breashears has been to the top of Everest and back five times. During those five ascensions, spanning 1981 through 2004 , the world renown mountaineer and documentarian noticed much warmer temperatures and thinning ice at high altitudes.

Three years after his last ascent, Breashears was approached by Frontline producer Martin Smith. Smith was producing a special on global warming, and was in search of photographs demonstrating the effects of global warming on the Himalayas, the home of the fourteen highest peaks on earth. Breashears knew of an 80-year old photo taken by George Mallory, the leader of the first Everest expedition.

Motivated by his firsthand exposure to climate change on Everest, Breashears decided to reproduce Mallory’s photo, shooting exactly where Mallory had 80 years before. The difference between the two images shocked the veteran alpinist, and inspired his photographic call to arms: the “Glacier Research Imaging Project” (GRIP). The fruit of GRIP is a series of startling images, “Rivers of Ice: Vanishing Glaciers of the Greater Himalaya,” now showing at New York City’s Asia Society.

For this dramatic series of juxtapositions, Breashears revisited the sites seen in photos by respected mountain photographers taken over the last century. Breashears has precisely recaptured images produced decades earlier, demonstrating the dramatic impact global warming has had on these areas. Notably, Breashears’ photos are not only demonstrative of substantial change, they are beautifully composed.

There are also three videos – two poignantly narrated pieces and one that takes the viewer on a virtual tour of where the Himalayas are located. These videos are a must-see if the viewer wishes to fully understand the magnitude of the change illustrated in the photographs. What might appear simply as a small, newly exposed rock face, for example, is actually the result of a 400-foot wall of snow and ice melting away. The scope is impossible to determine simply from staring at the images; thus the Asia Society provides illustrations to establish the colossal scale.

Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations, spells out the dire meaning behind the melting glacial ice:

“Many of the Greater Himalaya’s glaciers are in China, and the rivers that flow out these mountains and from these frozen reservoirs will help determine the fates of people from Afghanistan to the North China Plain. What the world chooses to do about climate change, will determine the fates of these glaciers and these peoples.”

The melt from these glaciers, the world’s largest sub-polar ice reserves, supply critical water flow to the Ganges, Mekong, Yangtze, Yellow, Brahmaputra and several other rivers. Hundreds of millions of people depend on these rivers to live. At this current melt rate, many of the Himalayan glaciers will be severely depleted in less than fifty years. Lonnie Thompson, paleoclimatologist and Distinguished University Professor in the School of Earth Sciences at The Ohio State University states:

“The glacier is a wonderful archive and you can take it to any goverment, you can take it the U.S. Senate; no one yet has come up with a political agenda the glacier might have to be behaving like it is, except the climate of the planet is changing.”

David Breashears has witnessed a harrowing change in these mountains and succeeded in illustrating the destruction caused by climate change in his dramatic comparisons. With “Rivers of Ice,” he has demonstrated the irreversible loss of hundreds of feet of ice. Breashears has been to the top and back, and guided others to the pinnacle of the world. But the greatest endeavor for Breashears remains – convincing people to do something about climate change.

Rivers of Ice: Vanishing Glaciers of the Greater Himalaya
Now through August 15, 2010 at Asia Society Museum
725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), New York, NY

Story and photos by Matt Mulholland.