Nansen's Pastport.

Bookseller Notes

An extraordinary production, combining materials, text and image to great effect, and a worthy tribute to the renowned polar explorer and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen, whose preoccupations are here extended to contemporary issues of immigration and climate change. The map, inspired by Olaus Magnus' Carta Marina of 1539, has the star of the North Pole at its centre, ringed by the earth's continents; the Nobel bronze medal has a melted air, as though exposed to an over heating sun; the passport itself, with Nansen's image, half young, half old, echoes the Post-war refugee passport which Nansen created, the pasted-in stamps drawn from nations predicted to be most affected by future climate disruption; the running motif, the Arctic tern, the migrant bird which covers the greatest distance; while the text itself is taken from Nansen's Nobel Lecture, December 19, 1922, opening with the words: 'In my opinion, the only avenue to salvation lies in cooperation between all nations on a basis of honest endeavor.'