Acacia Johnson

Photographer
     
Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award
Location: Anchorage, Alaska
Nationality: USA
Biography: Acacia Johnson is an artist and photographer from Alaska. Drawn to remote places and otherworldly landscapes, her work has focused on the environment, conservation, and the connections between people and place. After receiving a Fulbright grant to... MORE
Private Story
Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award
Copyright Acacia Johnson 2024
Updated Mar 2020
My work explores relationships between humans and the environment: how people perceive, interact with, and change the landscape, and the impacts of these changes on a local and global scale. Born and raised in Alaska, I have witnessed startling environmental change throughout my lifetime, including the complete disappearance of glaciers I knew as a child, and man-made ecological disasters such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill. In an era of climate emergency, photography has become a tool for me to learn about what healthy ecosystems and sustainable relationships to the earth actually look like; to illuminate the value of these relationships, and to shine light on what could put them at risk.

The Polar Regions, the forefront of climate change, are the primary focus of my work. These images are largely from my long-term personal work in the Canadian Arctic, documenting the Inuit people’s relationships to the Arctic landscape in a time of cultural, socioeconomic, and climatic change. Recently, this work has examined the role that the disappearing sea ice ecosystem plays in community life, subsistence, and the intergenerational transfer of indigenous knowledge. Additionally, I am including images from an older project in the Alaskan Arctic, and a recent project about a proposed mine in Alaska that could destroy the habitat of the world’s largest remaining population of brown bears.

My work has always involved complete immersion in, and deep commitment to, the places and topics I’ve photographed. In the Canadian Arctic, I lived with local families for up to four months at a time, doing my best to become part of the family, partake in every aspect of daily life, and cultivate lasting relationships. I also spent six years working on ships in the Arctic and Antarctica to gain a thorough understanding of the regions in which I work, and learn essential polar skills such as boat driving, firearm handling, and polar bear behavior – so that I may work there safely, and fully understand what stories are the most important to tell.

As a female photojournalist, I feel that courage–coupled with intuition, duty, and a prevailing sense of wonder–is one of the most important attributes in my vocation. It takes courage to listen to your intuition, decide who to trust, what stories to follow, when a picture should be taken, and also, importantly, when it should not. It takes courage and resilience to willingly immerse oneself in difficult situations, topics, and stories imbued with a sense of impending loss. I resonate with Anja Niedringhaus’s work for the moments of everyday joy, spontaneity, and play that radiate through her photographs, connecting viewers to the shared humanity of the topics she covered. To me, the most impactful way to inspire people to care about the future of the planet, and to enact lasting change, is by appealing to a sense of beauty, wonder, and shared humanity. People will only protect what they love, and photography is a way to make a love of the world both visible and understood.

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INSTALLATIONS

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Nordic Refuge

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ARCTIC

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ANTARCTICA

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Boundaries of Life & Stillness

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Love, Death, and the Ocean

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AIALIK

Acacia Johnson / Alaska
Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award by Acacia Johnson
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