Just before the pandemic broke out, I was at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, where I met Josh Hyde, the man behind the American Filmmaker Podcast. We talked and had some laughs and a lot of excellent tea (that’s one of Josh’s specialities).
The resulting podcast is my favorite interview. We got into favorite animals (spoiler: polar bears and geckos), building kayaks, and the nature of creativity. You can listen to our banter below.
I am excited to announce the imminent release of my first fine-art photography book, Chukotka, on the Russian Arctic!
It’s produced by Kris Graves Projects, in a format (7”x8.5”) that makes it affordable ($28) while retaining beautiful print quality on textured matte paper. Pre-orders are available here.
At the edges of the Bering Sea and Russia’s Arctic coastline lies one of the wildest regions on earth. In winter, the land is indistinguishable from the ocean, a vast white ice sheet extending into infinity. In summer, the tundra unveils itself in shades of moss and the coastlines are packed with polar bears and walrus.
Chukotka. The place where human destiny is carved by the cold.
The British Museum has opened a new exhibition in London, Arctic: Culture and Climate. I’m excited to be a part of this new exhibition in a significant way, having contributed the primary exhibition photographs and my short film Anaiyyun: Prayer for the Whale.
Much of the public perception of the Arctic is based on outdated and colonial ideas of an unexplored and desolate land. That’s certainly not the case, as the Arctic is full of life and community. I spoke with curator Peter Loovers of the exhibition at length and was impressed by his team’s deep understanding of the complex issues involved in the modern Arctic. The exhibition itself is an introduction to the Arctic, and they have done a great article with the basics.
If you find yourself in between April and August, I recommend stopping in to take it in! There’s a lot to see, ranging from the usual museum artifacts to all kinds of multimedia and experiences that will take you closer to this amazing region that is so dear to my heart.
I had a long and extensive interview with expert interviewer Martin Bauman in his podcast Story Untold. We covered a lot of ground, so much, in fact, that it is actually two episodes (epic Hollywood blockbuster-style). We cover a lot of pretty deep ground from shamanism to journalism. Check it out in the embedded player below, or in your own podcast player.
In photographer Kiliii Yüyan’s work, he has drawn on both wilderness survival skills and empathy — qualities he deems “critical” for the projects he embarks on in extreme environments and cultures outside his own.
“Human cultures are the most complicated things to understand,” he says. “Human culture is so rich. There’s so much to it.”
He talks about animism, searching for meaning in his late teens and early twenties, and the importance of representation in journalism.
“In the past, journalists have been known to do a lot of things where they just kind of parachute into a place. There’s a lot of this sort of old-school journalism … like, ‘If I’m a good journalist, I should be able to drop into any place in the world and make a story out of it,’” says Yüyan. “[I think] a good journalist goes in with an openness and an understanding that you don’t know everything — far from it.”
Martin Bauman, Story Untold podcast
Jen Samuel, a photo editor at National Geographic, and NatGeo photographer Kiliii Yuyan talk about the process of making photographs, researching and pitching stories, the editor-photographer relationship, and more. Filmed at the Museum of Art Fort Collins, CO, in conjunction with Yuyan’s exhibition “People of the Whale”, and National Geographic’s 50 Greatest Photographs, made possible by the Center for Fine Art Photography.
A big thank you to Jen Samuel for flying out to Colorado to talk with me at the opening of my exhibition, People of the Whale, at the Museum of Art Fort Collins. Additional thanks to Hamidah Glasgow of the Center for Fine Art Photography and Lisa Palmatier of the Museum.
I am excited to announce my first major solo exhibition, of People of the Whale! It’s in Colorado at the Museum of Art Fort Collins through the Center for Fine Art Photography.
My work serves as a counterpoint to the other half of the museum, which has an exhibition titled, “50 Greatest Photographs of National Geographic.” Curator Hamidah Glasgow thought it would be a great way to show, in a sense, the fading mainstream world of photojournalism juxtaposed against the new breed of photographer that is seeking to de-colonize journalism. In this case, it also serves to highlight that National Geographic itself has made big changes to how it tells stories and who is telling them.
The opening reception is Friday, November 8th. I’ll be doing an artist talk about my work with Arctic indigenous peoples, then leading up to something quite amazing: Jen Samuel, a photo editor from National Geographic, and I, asking each other questions and talking about photography and journalism!
Many thanks to Hamidah Glasgow and Jen Samuel for making it all come together!
Excited to announce I’m running a Drone Storytelling Workshop at Photo Center NW, Seattle, Oct 26-27. It wasn’t long ago that drones, or UAVs, came onto the scene, and we began seeing the same photos from directly above, of a beach or a forest canopy. Let’s move beyond! Today UAVs, are best thought of as flying lenses. While you can get epic landscapes with them, you can also use them to get to a human height over difficult places. Master the technical details and you can widen your ability to tell phenomenal stories.
UAVs seem simple, but they are dangerous to aircraft, and pose ethical issues with wildlife and people. How do you fly in zones near rural airports? How can you use them to build relationships with people rather than conflict? How can they improve your photographic stories? Join us October 26-27 in Seattle, at Photo Center NW.
Last winter, Jason Mark of Sierra Magazine asked me to work on a story on conservation in Chile. This particular story would be on the largest land donation for conservation in history, by the former CEO of Patagonia Inc, Kris Tompkins. I immediately had concerns because I understood that the gauchos inhabiting the land had been removed it became a park. As history has shown, evicting local and Indigenous peoples from their land proves to be a terrible idea in the long run.
There were all these stories about this mysterious project that was going to take possession of the lands and waters of Chile.
-Dago Guzman, superintendent of Patagonia Parque Nacional
But by the time Jason and I had trekked over a hundred miles over the sweltering and mountainous terrain of the new Patagonia Parque Nacional, we had seen a puma, herds of guanacos, countless birds, and I had changed my mind. In that time, I had come to understand the unique dynamics of the situation, the people, and their history. Central Patagonia’s new national parks have become a huge win for conservation.
Before it came to be though, Chileans were suspicious of the Tompkins gringos. How did it come to be? Why was the establishment of these parks nothing like the genocidal establishment of the national parks in the United States and elsewhere? Find out in Sierra Magazine.
When it comes to the wildlife, this is the best that could have happened, the transformation into a park.
-Daniel Velasquez Romero, former sheepherder, known as Patagonia’s “deer whisperer”
No place in the Arctic is less famous yet more important than the wetlands of the politically named National Petroleum Reserve. At the junction of several migratory bird flyways, it’s the densest concentration of birds in the Arctic. I spent a month over two seasons photographing this epic and intensely living landscape, and I am forever changed by it.
For birds, it has been called “Heathrow at the top of the world.”
-Chris Solomon, Alaska’s last vast wild place is open for drilling, National Geographic
Unfortunately, the reserve also has sizable oil and gas deposits, in particular around the critical wetland areas of Teshekpuk Lake. And the special protections put into place previously are being dismantled by the Trump administration.
It is more important, there are more birds, of higher density, in the NPR-A than in the Arctic [National Wildlife] Refuge.
-Rebecca McGuire, the Arctic Beringia Avian Ecologist for WCS, Alaska’s last vast wild place is open for drilling, National Geographic
Many people know that I’m a staunch supporter of conservation by local Indigenous communities, and that foremost I believe in the importance of people on the land. In a world manipulated by powerful forces, the land and its local guardians can use a helping hand. Legal protections can make a huge difference for a landscape and its wildlife. At Teshekpuk, there is a caribou herd that thousands depend on for subsistence, plus that critical bird habitat for migratory birds.
Find out more about this little-known area that is the largest piece of public land in the US, the Arctic Flyway, aka the Arctic Petroleum Reserve, at National Geographic.
This last contest season I had many stories that had not yet been completed or published, but I entered anyway, and my story and images for Vogue on Women of the Iditarod won awards through both PDN and IPA. Many thanks to the jurors!
I’ve also been working on more fine art, trying my best to tackle some of the issues about indigenous culture in a colonial world through photography. PDN and the Photographic Center Northwest separately awarded my image ‘Confluence’, from my new series, Myths of the Indigenous Arctic. It will also be shown in my upcoming exhibition People of the Whale at the Center for Fine Art Photography in October.
