Published by teNeues in 2017, Laurent Baheux’s Ice Is Black directs its attention to the landscapes and wildlife of the polar world. Photographed in Norway, Iceland, and Canada, its subjects range from glaciers and frozen plains to polar bears with their cubs, foxes in snow, and seals moving through icy water. The book brings these environments and their inhabitants into a single, sustained study rather than treating wildlife as separate from habitat.

Across 192 pages, 125 duotone photographs establish a deliberately restricted visual language. Black-and-white photography removes the descriptive appeal of color and concentrates attention on scale, texture, silhouette, and tonal contrast. The title’s apparent contradiction is therefore central to the work: ice is represented not as blank whiteness, but as a field of dark water, shadow, weather, animal forms, and shifting gradations of light.

Baheux is both a French nature photographer and an environmental activist, and the project connects aesthetic observation with ecological concern. Ice is presented as an essential part of the world’s ecosystems, while global warming and population growth form the context of its increasing vulnerability. The photographs retain the autonomy of images rather than becoming illustrations of an argument, yet their beauty is inseparable from the possibility of loss.

For collectors of landscape, wildlife, and environmentally engaged photography, the book’s significance lies in this conjunction of subjects and methods. Its breadth—moving between expansive terrain and close encounters with animals—is held together by a consistent monochrome approach. As a 2017 hardcover publication, Ice Is Black offers a substantial account of Baheux’s polar work and a focused example of how a nature photobook can join formal discipline to an explicit appeal for preservation.