In one of the most inhospitable regions of the world, where life exists on a knife’s edge, Ragnar Axelsson has spent four decades photographing the beauty of its frozen landscapes and, more recently, the impact of climate change on the lives of the hardy people who call this frozen wilderness home.
The Arctic is one of the last great wilderness areas on Earth, and despite its harsh weather and utterly unforgiving terrain, people have inhabited this region for millennia. Icelandic photographer Ragnar Axelsson first started traveling to the Arctic in the 1970s to photograph the desolate beauty of its landscapes and to capture, in stark and often surprisingly intimate portraits, the hard lives and rugged existences of the people who live there.
Over the last 40 years or so, Axelsson has been a regular visitor to many of the most northerly regions of our planet—what he himself calls “the edge of the livable world”—traveling to countries like Iceland, Siberia, and Greenland to document the almost otherworldly spectacle of their Arctic regions in stunning black-and-white photographs.
Tatiana Hopper’s YouTube channel is one of my favorites and definitely worth subscribing to if you’re a photographer or somebody interested in the visual arts. I have to confess that I was not aware of the amazing photography of Ragnar Axelsson that is showcased in Tatiana’s video, presented here. The images she selected to highlight in the video are absolutely stunning, and based on their quality and artistry, it is not surprising to learn that Axelsson is a highly sought-after photographer who has been commissioned for work by the likes of Life magazine and National Geographic.
More recently, however, Axelsson’s work has taken on a more tragic and urgent aspect as our climate has warmed alarmingly in the last few decades, threatening the delicate ecosystems of the Arctic and the lives of the people who depend on them. As Tatiana reminds us in the video, photography can play a very important role in documenting not only our world and the lives we make for ourselves in it but also the monumental changes that our presence on this planet can bring about—and not always for the better.
