People of the Whale wins 2017 PDN World in Focus Award

PDN has awarded my series ‘People of the Whale‘ in the 2017 World in Focus Travel Photography Competition. It’s a set of images that give you the feeling of being out on the sea ice in Arctic Alaska. From my statement about the series:

Far out on the ice, under the never-setting sun of Arctic spring, time evaporates. The mind calms and you begin to inhale the world around you: the cold, the wind, the ice, the quiet, the wait.

But underneath the damper of stillness, life boils. Out on the tuvaq–the expansive interface of sea and ice–everything happens. On the tuvaq, the whale breaches. The maktaq is eaten. The hunters watch the horizon. We wait. There is no need for words. The mind is still.

Many thanks to my Iñupiaq friends and crew who made it possible to tell the story of life in the far North, and to the mystery of the sea ice.