In Charles Xelot’s Motionless Wake, a path is born from inaction. The boat is stagnant; the force lies in the sea itself, as the tide continues to move around an anchored ship. The wake slices a long wound in the ice, a clear division that curves out as far as is possibly visible.

From the sailors’ view, the ice is unending. A clear destination will take the men to civilization; their coordinates will return them to land, but it must feel otherwise sometimes. The endless sea can feel like the ends of the earth.

Despite the shape of the globe, the concept of ​‘the world’s edge’ persists in imagination — the idea that somewhere it is so remote, that it’s the very end of the line. Xelot’s path to infinity feels like it may lead to this mythic edge. It also calls to my mind the other end, the one where humans cut into the earth with our constant need, dividing her resources until we reach the actual end of the line.

Xelot draws attention to the finite nature of the earth’s energy resources, even as his work leaves a strong impression of boundlessness. I love this photograph, with its minimal shapes in a blue and white world. I see an expression of the way it feels to be very small and waiting, with plans stalled by geopolitical foolishness. But we are beholden to yet larger forces. And right now we have time to look at the crystalline design of the natural world, at the earth’s fierce beauty.

-Lisa Woodward