Capturing Climate Change Through the Lives of the Inuit | Exposure

The challenge with climate change is how do you photograph climate change? How do you illustrate that? So I decided to tell a story of climate change through a personal [Music] view.

My work in Greenland is a chapter of my long-term body of work on climate change. On my first day in town, I arrived with a helicopter and looking on this sea ice, I got completely overwhelmed. It was my first experience in the Arctic in the wintertime with the sea ice; it was amazing. Luckily, I got invited to this dinner. There was this hunter; his name is Unom. The next morning, he invites me out on the sled. So, I'm there waiting, ready with all my equipment, you know, super happy, and oh my God, my second day in the field!

I made a huge mistake. You know, you want to get one more picture, so I stood up from a sled and I slipped over ropes, and boom! Dogs just took off. After about an hour, we see a black small pond getting bigger and bigger, and it was this guy that turned around and went in our direction, and luckily, every back was there.

One of my favorite pictures is a portrait of Albert Lucason. He is a hunter from Umak. It was April, and the ice was starting to melt, which is highly unusual; usually, the ice would stay up until June. We went out in a boat and we found a small ice flow, so it was an opportunity to take a portrait of him and also a great way to illustrate the impact of climate [Music] change.

Climate change for sure affects them also socially. When there is ice, they have more territory, more ways of transport. They can visit their friends and relatives, who are all spread around the Umak Bay. I will never forget these long trips on the ice. On my last trip, we were coming back from a settlement to this town, and it was like a 7-hour trip over frozen ice. This family that I was with, they were just trying to get to a birthday party of their granddaughter.

I'm trying to build a bridge between my work and the readers or the viewers. They have to draw attention so that people start to ask questions, start to participate in the dialogue. What is the future like for our planet? You know, we got to change so many things. Every time I'm in these small remote communities, I find so many aspects of life totally inspiring. They are trying to make it, and their life is changing [Music] quickly.