Water percolating into freezing alpine caves like this one, called Eiskogelhöhle, high in the Tennen Mountains south of Salzburg, Austria, sculpts itself into mesmerizing structures: huge Damoclean icicles, cones rising from below, and floor-covering cascades.
Portfolio: Lighting the Darkest Dark
AJ caught up with Robbie Shone, one of the world’s preeminent cave photographers, via phone in February 2023
“I went to art college in Sheffield, England, in 1999, and at the time I was painting really large canvases. I wasn’t into photography at all. But a friend joined the caving club at the university and asked me to come along. I was more interested in rock climbing, which was one of the reasons I went to Sheffield, because of the quality of the climbing, and I didn’t fancy caving. But he persuaded me to come on a trip, to Yorkshire Dales.
“It was love at first sight. There’s no other way of describing it. We did a short rappel and landed in a pool of water. There was a passage where water was disappearing into the blackness, and I was really really moved to discover where it went. I felt something happening to me in the cave—that one trip changed everything.
“But I had to go back to university and paint these big canvases, all while thinking about caves. I
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