Los Angeles photographer Nataly Rader examines the idea of portraiture using massive and ever-changing glacier ice forms as her subjects, considering her own persona in their reflections.

Nataly was born and raised in the Soviet Ukraine, where she was classically trained as an opera singer. Upon relocation to NYC, she developed a career as a make up artist in film and television. After the birth of her son, she picked up an interest in photography. This quickly evolved into a passion for telling stories within a single frame of exposure. Exploring the endless possibilities within the medium, Nataly has been working in a variety of genres and formats. Her images of landscapes, portraits, and street photography have been exhibited in group shows and online publications throughout the US and Europe.

Portraits of Ice

Before there was a camera lens, there was the portrait, preserving in a fixed moment the image of a beloved, capturing a living instant, carrying forward in time the life of that world. Memory might fade, but the portrait would sustain.When I first stood before a glacier, I felt a deep vibration, connection, almost love. Beholding a glacier, you see it moving, constantly changing, hear it cracking. Then, there is a perfect moment of stillness, when everything is frozen and you are of that moment. That feeling sits in my heart and memory and mind, and I want to preserve it, as with a portrait of a beloved.

When I first stood before a glacier, I felt a deep vibration, connection, almost love. Beholding a glacier, you see it moving, constantly changing, hear it cracking. Then, there is a perfect moment of stillness, when everything is frozen and you are of that moment. That feeling sits in my heart and memory and mind, and I want to preserve it, as with a portrait of a beloved.

Some days I wake up feeling like everything is going right. Like the glaciers, I feel precious, admired, powerful, mesmerizing. I feel the power embodied in the ice. Other days I feel the opposite – cracked, fragile, faded, questioning the meaning of my life. I am not one or the other, I am both. The glaciers, too, are both. Strong, formidable, temporary.

I honor these contradictions in these Portraits of Ice, preserving the image of these beloved formations as they, like me, are in peril of vanishing.