Antarctic Souls

In 2008, Scott Sternbach, the director of LaGuardia Community College’s photography department received a National Science Foundation grant to photograph the breathtaking Antarctic landscape and a menagerie of penguins, sea lions and other animals that inhabit the magnificent tundra. He also captured the researchers at the remote Palmer Research Station in stunning black and white portraits.

Eight of Scott Sternbach’s Antarctic portraits and a 20-foot wide mural of the Antarctic landscape are part of the American Museum of Natural History’s “Race to the End of the Earth” exhibition running from May 29, 2010 until January 2011, after which it will travel the world for 10 years.

The exhibition recounts one of the most stirring tales of Antarctic exploration: the contest between Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and British Royal Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott to reach the South Pole in 1911-1912. Mr. Sternbach will be at the exhibition between noon and 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 29.