This chill-inducing photograph documents Dry Ice Environment, a 1967 work by the fêted American artist Judy Chicago. It was one of Chicago’s self-termed “Atmospheres”, a succession of landscape installations and performances (often involving pyrotechnics) that proposed an alternative to the period’s prevalent brand of “masculine, achromatic minimalism”, to quote Observer. In this instance, however, the artist created a vast, dissolving sculptural environment from thirty-seven tons of dry ice—here observed by an awe-struck child in rather aesthetically pleasing, bright red shorts.
