The breathtaking landscapes of the North are being made frail and fragile due to climate change.
From Greenland via the Arctic to Siberia, the North reveals the advance of climate change in a particularly dramatic way. It makes the beauty of the photographs taken by Icelandic photographer Ragnar Axelsson seem almost physically unbearable as they show us the amount of destruction we are accepting. Axelsson takes photos at the edge of the habitable world, a world that is difficult to reach, hidden and inhospitable. Nevertheless, people have found a way to attack and destroy this unique world and its border regions. This is destruction without reparation, destruction that encroaches upon a whole way of life and that holds a mirror up to us.
Ragnar Axelsson’s mirror is his love of this landscape, the ice, the rocks, the people and the animals. He offers one example: “Did you know that the Greenlandic sled dog is one of the oldest breeds of dog in the world and that without it there would be no Inuit in Greenland? Only the Greenlandic sled dog enabled people to reach both Poles. There’s something human about a big sled dog and the stories I’ve heard from the hunters are remarkable, something the outside world didn’t know much about until now.”
I certainly didn’t know this. What I do know is that Axelsson’s photos speak to our conscience. They reveal this world to us, and his stories – through the breathtaking transience of black, white and grey – enchant and shame us in equal measure. “I want to show the most remarkable way of living in the harshest conditions, unfamiliar to most of us. And that includes capturing the unique sound of a cold, windy night.” Ragnar Axelsson documents this disappearing world by photographing it as its most impressive.
“It’s like a calling. Like something tugging at you. Sometimes it’s extremely difficult, cold and desperate. I feel like I have to do this to show the world what life is like in the Arctic and to give the inhabitants a voice,” says Axelsson. And he displays them all in his photos – the animals, the people and the landscapes in the northernmost regions of our planet. He is always drawn there. Visually stunning, his photos explain what attracts him, what stirs him up, what preoccupies him. He tells stories that are not adventure trips, but reality. The biggest challenge is survival. “When the weather is at its worst, that’s when I take the photos that make a lasting impression. When my face, my fingers and my toes are frozen and I can’t take it any more, I feel like I’m going to reach my limits to get the image that encapsulates this moment.” Tenacity and passion are the hallmarks of Ragnar’s obsession and it is not uncommon for the most powerful images of a situation to emerge at the moment he actually wanted to give up.
It is precisely this attitude and his personality that has earned him the respect of the Inuit. Over his 40 years of travelling and working as a photographer there, a relationship of trust has developed. The Inuit take him hunting and reveal their lives to him, since he always comes back and lives among them. “For them to invite me to see how they live and to learn from them is just humbling. It has taught me that all people and all life must be respected,” Axelsson says.
Taken over a very long period of time, his photos form a chronicle of climate change. “The Arctic is beautiful. It’s alluring but frail and fragile. The thing is, when you look at a photo of such beauty, you are forced to consider whether you want to see it destroyed. Do you want to take responsibility for causing it to disappear?”
The glaciers in his native Iceland are melting too. He photographs them from above, creating photos that resemble a landscape of line drawings. “I don’t just see it as a glacier, but as something alive. When we look at it, new images and shapes are created in our imagination because everything is always changing. When will we realise that we should listen to nature instead of wanting to rise above it? It is of the utmost importance to document life in the North and the changes that are taking place in words and pictures for generations to come and the whole world to see. A photo helps open people’s eyes to what is happening. This will not happen by itself. The summer sea ice and glaciers of the North, the Earth’s refrigerator that keeps our temperatures tolerable, are receding.”
Ragnar Axelsson is conscious of his role. There is no question of when and where he will get involved as an ambassador and artist campaigning for a change in consciousness and climate change. He is the one who returns to live among the Inuit, who witnesses the disappearing glaciers in his homeland, and who, by communicating through the beauty of his photos, doesn’t let the Western world off the hook.
As featured in SLEEK 77 – TRUST. Available in print and digital here.
