SCIENCE AND CULTURE

Arctic photographers bring climate changeinto focusCarolyn Beans, Science Writer

In 2009, a hunter shot a polar bear and carried it bydogsled about 750 meters to the town of Ittoqqor-toormiit on the eastern coast of Greenland. Typically,the town’s hunters encounter polar bears on distantsea ice a couple of hours or even days from town. Theyskin their catches and leave behind the heavy bones.But as climate change melts more sea ice—the bear’spreferred hunting grounds—polar bear encounterscloser to human settlements are becoming more com-mon. When this hunter arrived with an entire bear intow, the Danish photographer Carsten Egevang wasthere to capture the awe-struck reactions.

In one photograph, the hand of a boy, about12 years old, rests on the giant palm of the polar bear’spaw (Fig. 1). Roughly a dozen townspeople sized theirpalms up against the bear’s, Egevang recalls. “It actedvery much like a magnet to them,” he says. The imagesuggests the people’s deep connection to the polarbear. It also highlights their practice of hunting a

species threatened by climate change, a juxtapositionthat Egevang says is what his photography is all about.

Egevang is one of a growing number of photogra-phers drawn to the Arctic, a region on the front lines ofclimate change. The area has warmed more than twiceas fast as the global average. Scientists believe thistrend, known as Arctic amplification, is caused in part bythe loss of sea ice. As this reflective surface melts, itleaves behind darker water that absorbs more heat (1).Photographers are documenting the effects of thiswarming on landscapes, wildlife, and people (MovieS1). Many share the same end goal: to convince audi-ences unmoved by scientific data that climate change ishappening now.

Capturing ChangeEgevang began his Arctic career as a scientist. For hisdoctoral research at the University of Copenhagen, heattached geolocators to Arctic terns and tracked them

Fig. 1. When a hunter brought his polar bear kill back to a small Greenland town, photographer Carsten Egevangwatched as townspeople sized up their palms against the bear’s. He captured one such encounter in “Paw & Hand.”Image courtesy of Carsten Egevang.

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from the Arctic to the Southern Ocean and back. Hediscovered that these birds can cover more than80,000 kilometers each year, a distance nearly twice aslong as previously estimated and the longest knownmigration of any animal (2). In the course of researchat the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources,Egevang took photographs as well as data points onseabird population numbers. Gradually, his photog-raphy habit became a profession, although he stillspends about 20% of his time studying seabirds.

Egevang’s transition to artist was prompted largelyby his desire to share observations. He felt frustratedthat his research didn’t reach much beyond the scien-tific community. “With photography, I really feel that Iget the attention of a very large crowd,” he says. Cli-mate projections may not move people, he says. “Butwhen you show the local hunters, how they can’t dowhat they usually do because there is no sea ice and it ishappening so rapidly, it is much easier to understand.”

Egevang focuses on the people of Greenland,whose livelihoods are threatened as animals react to awarming landscape by changing their patterns ofmovement. In many cases, hunters can’t reach huntinggrounds. “With global climate change, the sea icedoesn’t get thick enough to ride sleds over,” he says.

The photographer’s images endeavor to bringdaily life of Greenlandic towns to the attention of aglobal audience. His work shows, for example, a hunter,binoculars in hand, scanning the terrain for polar bear;an elderly woman harvesting a chick from a colony ofauk; a child biking down a street as another runs be-hind, plowed snow reaching high over their heads.

The Arctic’s PullPracticing photography in an Arctic climate comeswith unique challenges. First, there’s the cold, which

Egevang considers a mental hurdle. “You can decidethat you’re cold and then for sure you will be.”

Then, there’s the travel. Egevang often treks bydogsled with hunters for 3 to 6 days at a time. “I do notdictate where we go and what we do,” he says. “Theywill do their hunting as if I wasn’t there.”

He’s not the only intrepid photographer forced tocatch a ride in hopes of capturing the unfolding dramaof climatic changes. For New York City-based photog-rapher Diane Tuft, capturing the melting ice in theArctic Ocean meant traveling to the North Pole on aRussian nuclear-powered icebreaker. And snappingaerial views of the mountain glaciers of Svalbard, aNorwegian archipelago, meant chartering a helicopterfrom the Norwegian Polar Institute. She included herwork from these and other journeys in a recently pub-lished monograph The Arctic Melt: Images of a Dis-appearing Landscape (3). [These works will also be ondisplay September 1, 2017, through February 20, 2018,at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington,DC (www.cpnas.org/exhibitions/archive/arctic-melt-images.html).]

To capture the effects of climate change throughtime-lapse photography, photographer James Baloglaunched the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) program as partof his Earth Vision Institute, a Colorado-based organi-zation dedicated to integrating art and science in aneffort to reveal environmental change. He and his EISteam anchored cameras to cliff faces. To service thecameras, which can be 80 miles from the nearest vil-lage, they travel by foot, horseback, dogsled, skis,boat, or helicopter.

EIS installed their first cameras in 2007 and now have43 cameras positioned over 24 glaciers, each snappingimages of the changing landscape during every daylighthour (see Extreme Ice Survey at extremeicesurvey.org/about-eis/). From the Solheimajokull Glacier in Icelandto the Columbia Glacier in Alaska, the photos fromeach camera viewed in time-lapse videos show gla-ciers’ stunning retreats.

Despite the logistical challenges, a growing num-ber of photographers are heading for the Arctic. KerryKoepping, another Colorado-based photographer,has traveled from the glaciers of Northern Greenlandto the Holuhraun Volcano in Iceland to the foothills ofDenali, Alaska. With the consequences of climatechange on full display, he feels a sense of urgency totell the landscape’s story. “Most really good photog-raphers are storytellers,” he says. “With that there is aninherent need and a responsibility to communicatewhat we see with the rest of the world.”

A Visual MessageAs a research affiliate with the University of ColoradoBoulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research(INSTAAR), Koepping is finding ways to not only cap-ture stunning images of change, but inform Arctic re-search along the way. Scientists at the institute keepKoepping up to date on climate change research. He,in turn, reports back on his own observations from thefield, and creates a body of work that often underscoresthe scientists’ findings. And as the founder and project

Fig. 2. Photographer Diane Tuft often zooms in, to the point of abstraction.Taken from a helicopter, this photo, “Relics, Isfjorden, Norway,” shows crackedice in a Greenland Sea fjord. Without features to provide scale, viewers maymistake the scene for a close-up. Image courtesy of Diane Tuft.

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director of the Arctic Arts Project, Koepping hasteamed up with other photographers to do the same(see arcticartsproject.com/index.shtml).

These seven photographers, including Egevang, arecommitted to using their art to help the public un-derstand the science of climate change. In addition tothe collaboration with INSTAAR, the group also workswith scientists from the University of Copenhagen,Grenoble University, the National Center for Atmo-spheric Research, National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration, and others.

Whether focused on atmospheric studies or ice coresamples, scientist and photographer collaboratorsstrive to visually represent the subject of study, saysKoepping. “There is not always an easy answer to that,”he adds. The Arctic Arts Project is currently workingwith INSTAAR’s director, paleoclimatologist Jim White,to decide how best to visually document methane, agreenhouse gas, being released from natural sources asthe Arctic warms. With White’s input, the team is nowcapturing images of frozen methane bubbles risingfrom lake bottoms, as well as polygon hummocks:mounded structures that form in a pattern across thetundra as permafrost thaws and then refreezes.

“The [Arctic Arts Project] pictures are just dropdead gorgeous,” says White. “And at the same timethey convey a really difficult message, which is thatall of this beautiful blue ice is going to becomebeautiful blue ocean, and when it does, it is going toraise the sea level.” When White gives talks on cli-mate change to the public, he often follows Koep-ping’s striking photographs of Arctic ice with picturesof flooded Miami streets, a reminder that the city isalready experiencing the consequences of risingoceans.

Exactly how to convey such a stark message inbeautiful frames is a challenge that all Arctic photog-raphers are grappling with. “Greenland is extremelybeautiful,” says Egevang. “You can just shoot from thehip and get some really nice images.” To go deeper,to show the fragility of that beauty and the harshnessof the landscape, requires careful aesthetic choices. “IfI just wanted to show the beauty, I would do colorphotography,” says Egevang. Instead, he works mostlyin black and white. “It’s a very pure form of communi-cating life in the Arctic because you can’t use bright

colors in order to impress the viewer. You sort of forcethe viewer to concentrate on the image more.”

Tuft approaches landscapes as though they are livingsculptures, often zooming in to the point of abstraction.In her photograph “Relics, Isfjorden, Norway,” shepresents a view from a helicopter of cracked ice in a fjordin the Greenland Sea (Fig. 2). But because she framesthe shot without features that provide scale, the viewer

could easily mistake the scene for a close-up. “Mywholeidea is just to bring something beautiful to people sothey notice it and then they ask questions,” she says. In“Relics,” she’s inviting viewers to question scale. Forother works, they may question color, why a particularfeature is blue. “Then I can go from there to attract at-tention to an issue that is difficult,” she says.

A Foot in Each CampEgevang strives to have his images help scientists andlocals see from each other’s perspectives. Greenlandichunting practice, for example, is an issue he revisitsoften, as both a scientist and a photographer. Whenhe began researching in the Arctic, Egevang couldn’tunderstand why people hunted threatened species,such as polar bear and seabirds. But as he studiedhunting through photography, his view becamemore nuanced.

“I feel now that I have a foot in each camp, meaningthat I can certainly see from the locals’ viewpoint justhow much hunting means to them,” Egevang says.“But I can very much also see from a scientific viewpointthat, obviously, overharvesting is not a good idea.” Inhis photographs, he avoids romanticizing hunting, dis-playing hints of overharvesting as well as cultural re-minders of Greenland’s hunting heritage. In another ofhis black and white photographs of the polar bear shotoutside Ittoqqortoormiit, the hunter sits on top of theslain bear as it lies limp across the dogsled, at oncespeaking to cultural heritage and the death of athreatened animal. “The world,” he says, “is obviouslynot black and white.”

1 NASA Earth Observatory (May 26, 2013) Arctic Amplification. Available at https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=81214. Accessed June 15, 2017.

2 Egevang C, et al. (2010) Tracking of Arctic terns Sterna paradisaea reveals longest animal migration. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA107:2078–2081.

3 Tuft D (2017) The Arctic Melt: Images of a Disappearing Landscape (Assouline Publishing, New York).

“If I just wanted to show the beauty, I would do colorphotography.”

—Carsten Egevang

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