Private Story
Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award
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.