Reframing an Arctic Image, out of the Sublime

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2016-01-26 Reframing an Arctic Image, Out of the Sublime

Thoreson, Kristine, Nicole

Thoreson, K. (2016). Reframing an Arctic Image, Out of the Sublime (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/27572 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/2779 doctoral thesis

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Reframing an Arctic Image, Out of the Sublime

Kristine Thoreson

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

GRADUATE PROGRAM OF ART

CALGARY, ALBERTA

January, 2016

Abstract

A proliferation of sublime, mythic and nearly vacant landscape photographs of Arctic regions are circulating in museums and galleries internationally; artist monographs of these photographs are also readily available in major booksellers. Although the photographs are artfully crafted and technically superior, there is the question of what an accretion of so many sublime landscape images of the North accomplishes in terms of perceptions of place, community and culture? It is true that creating awe-inspiring photographs that promote an appreciation for polar-regions is legitimate work. Yet, taking a wider view of this field of landscape art photography reveals important insights into our beliefs about places. Re-examining the production and circulation of recent photographs will underline ways in which photography creates and sustains place perceptions that in turn inform local and global attitudes about the Arctic. This Social Sciences and

Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funded project presents an in-depth account of three bodies of work by the prominent artists Olaf Otto Becker, Camille Seaman and

Tiina Itkonen as well as the contexts within which they are created and presented. It will provide links to historic practices that have informed modern works, an analysis of the notions of place that emerge, and importantly, through research creation1 it will offer new and alternative approaches to art photography in the Arctic as a result of field work carried out in Ilulissat, Greenland.

1 An approach to research that combines creative and academic research practices, and supports the development of knowledge and innovation through artistic expressions, scholarly investigation, and experimentation, The creation process is situated within the research activity and produces critically or analysis of a creators work, conventional works of technological development, or work that focuses on the creation of curricula, The research-creation process and the resulting artistic work are judged according to SSHRC’s established merit review criteria. ii

Acknowledgements

I offer a thousand thanks to my supervisor Dr. Jean-René Leblanc and co-supervisor Dr.

Susan Bennett for the much appreciated guidance, support and patience that you each offered me throughout this entire process. And to my committee members Dr. Brian

Rusted and Dr. Robert Kelly, thank you for the meetings, assistance and support that you happily offered at every stage. Thank you to the Department of Art, the Department of

Graduate Studies, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Social Sciences and

Humanities Research Council for the funding they each provided for this project. Thank you as well to my family and friends who have patiently cheered me on from the sidelines over the past five years. And finally, to my parents Bud and Charleen Thoreson, thank you for instilling in me a belief in learning and higher education, and for encouraging me to do what I love in life.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgements ...... iii

Table of contents ...... iv

List of Figures and Illustrations ...... vi

Chapter 1: Introduction, Why Greenland? ...... 1

1.1 Why Greenland? ...... 1

1.2 The Photographic Artists ...... 16

1.3 Olaf Otto Becker ...... 22

1.4 Ties to Historical Notions of the ‘North’ ...... 35

1.5 Camille Seaman ...... 53

1.6 Tiina Itkonen ...... 67

1.7 Contemporary Art Photography, Significance of Place

Perceptions ...... 86

1.8 Re-thinking Popular Motifs: the Sublime, the Otherworldly

and the Peripheral North ...... 93

1.9 Pushing Back ...... 100

1.10 Chapter One Conclusion ...... 105

Chapter 2: Research Context ...... 107

2.1 Contextualization, the Field of Art Photography ...... 107

2.1.1 Sarah Anne Johnson ...... 108

2.1.2 Lars Tunbjörk ...... 113

2.1.3 Mette Tronvoll ...... 115

2.1.4 Jorma Puranen and Janet Biggs ...... 119

2.1.5 Pipa Lykke Løgstrup and Julie Decker ...... 124

Chapter 3: Research Creation ...... 133

3.1 The Artist Researcher ...... 134

3.2 Research-creation and practice-based Research ...... 137

3.3 Daily Journal Entries ...... 142

3.4 Photographic Experimentation and Approaches ...... 170

3.5 Creative Synthesis and Validation of Research ...... 188

3.6 Conclusion...... 200

Works Cited ...... 205

Bibliography ...... 217

List of Illustrations

Fig. 1. Tiina Itkonen, Icefjord II, 2005. Tiina Itkonen. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, June, 2015.

Fig. 2. Ed Burtynsky. Socar Oil Fields #1ab, Baku Azerbaijan, 2006. Edward Burtynsky.

N.p. N.d. Web. 15, July, 2015.

Fig. 3. Olaf Otto Becker, Ilulissat Icefjord 5, 07/ 2003 69˚ 11’59” N, 51˚ 08’08” W

Olaf Otto Becker. N.d. N.p. Web. 10, April, 2015.

Fig. 4. Olaf Otto Becker, Ilulissat Icefjord 6, 07/2003, 69°11’58’’ N, 51°07’08’’ W.

Olaf Otto Becker. N.d. N.p. Web. 10, April, 2015.

Fig. 5. Olaf Otto Becker, Ilulissat Icefjord 3, 07 / 2003, 69° 11’ 59” N, 51° 14’ 02” W.

Olaf Otto Becker. N.d. N.p. Web. 10, April, 2015.

Fig. 6. Olaf Otto Becker, Ilulissat Icefjord 09, 07/2003, 69°11’50’’ N, 51°12’54’’ W.

Olaf Otto Becker. N.d. N.p. Web. 10, April, 2015.

Fig. 7. Olaf Otto Becker, 827 Nuussuaq, 07 / 200674° 06’ 45” N, 57° 03’ 32” W.

Becker, Olaf Otto. Broken Line. Ostfildern: Hatje CantzVerlag, 2007. Print.

Verlag, 2007. N. pag. Print.

Fig. 8. Olaf Otto Becker, Ikerasak, Qarajaqs Icefjord 1, 07 / 2005, 70° 29’46” N, 51° 18’

14” W. Becker, Olaf Otto. Broken Line. Ostfildern: Hatje CantzVerlag, 2007. N. pag.

Print.

Fig. 9. Olaf Otto Becker, Qimmeq, Nuussuaq, 07 / 2006, 74° 06’ 36” N, 57° 03’ 32” W.

Broken Line. Ostfildern: Hatje CantzVerlag, 2007. N. pag. Print.

Fig. 10. Olaf Otto Becker, Oquaatsut 5, 07/2003,69°19’57’’ N, 51°00’23’’ W.

Olaf Otto Becker. N.d. N.p. Web. 10, April, 2015.

Fig. 11. Ed Burtynsky, Westar Open Pit Coal Mine, Sparwood, British Columbia,

Canada, 1985. Edward Burtynsky. N.p. N.d. Web. 15, July, 2015.

Fig. 12. Frederic Edwin Church, The Icebergs (1861). Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

Arctic. Esbjerg: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2013. 22. Print.

Fig. 13. Carl Rasmussen, Gustav Holm’s Umiak Expedition to Ammassalik 1883-85,

1891. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Arctic. Esbjerg: Louisiana Museum of Modern

Art, 2013. 12. Print.

Fig. 14. Peder Balke, Vardøhus Fortress, 1870s. Riopelle, Christopher; Knut Ljøgodt and

Marit Ingeborg Lange. Paintings by Peder Balke. London: National Gallery London,

2014.

Fig. 15. William Bradford, This view shows the beautiful forms in varied shapes which the berg assumed. On this berg we found a lake of fresh water, covering an acre in extent.

1869. Lapides, Michael. Ed. The Arctic Regions: Illustrated with Photographs Taken on an Art Expedition to Greenland by William Bradford with a Descriptive Narrative by the

Artist. Boston: David R. Godine Publisher in association with the New Bedford Whaling

Museum, 2013. Print.

1869. Lapides, Michael. Ed. The Arctic Regions: Illustrated with Photographs Taken on

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an Art Expedition to Greenland by William Bradford with a Descriptive Narrative by the

Artist. Boston: David R. Godine Publisher in association with the New Bedford Whaling

Museum, 2013. Print.

Fig. 17. Olaf Otto Becker, Ilulissat Icefjord 4, Part 2, 07/2003, 69°12’74’’ N, 51°07’88’’

W. Olaf Otto Becker. N.d. N.p. Web. 10, April, 2015. .

Fig. 18. Kristine Thoreson, Ilulissat Icefjord from Hiking Trail, 2014. Collection of the artist.

Fig. 19. Kristine Thoreson, Ilulissat City from Hiking Trail, 2014. Collection of the artist.

Fig. 20. Camille Seaman, Iceberg with Seal Blood – Qassiarsuq, Greenland, September

2009. Camille Seaman Portfolios. Camille Seaman. N.d. Web. 10, May, 2015.

Fig. 21. Camille Seaman, Grand Pinnacle Iceberg Detail, East Greenland, August 23,

2006. Seaman, Camille. Melting Away. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2015.

Print.

Fig. 22. Camille Seaman, Tabular Iceberg, Detail, Antarctic Sound. N.d. Camille Seaman

Portfolios. Camille Seaman. N.d. Web. 10, May, 2015. .

Fig. 23. Tiina Itkonen, Iceberg Gallery 6. Tiina Itkonen. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, June, 2015.

Fig. 24. Tiina Itkonen Sermermiut 2, Ilulissat 2007. Tiina Itkonen. N.p. N.d. Web. 10,

June, 2015. .

Fig. 25. Tiina Itkonen, Ilulissat 4, 2010. Itkonen, Tiina. Avannaa. Berlin: Kehrer Verlag,

2014. Print.

viii

Fig. 26. Tiina Itkonen, Ikerasak, 2009. Tiina Itkonen. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, June, 2015.

Fig. 27. Tiina Itkonen, Qaanaaq 4, 2005. Itkonen, Tiina. Avannaa. Berlin: Kehrer Verlag,

2014. Print.

Fig. 28. Tiina Itkonen, Iceberg 2, Kullorsuaq, 2006. Tiina Itkonen. N.p. N.d. Web. 10,

June, 2015. .

Fig. 29. Ragnar Axelsson, Untitled, East Greenland, 1995. Axelsson, Ragnar. Last Days of the Arctic. Reykjavik: Crymogea, 2013. Print.

Fig. 30. Ragnar Axelsson, Untitled, East Greenland 1997. Axelsson, Ragnar. Last Days of the Arctic. Reykjavik: Crymogea, 2013. Print.

Fig. 31. Ragnar Axelsson, Untitled 1996. Axelsson, Ragnar. Last Days of the Arctic.

Reykjavik: Crymogea, 2013. Print.

Fig 32. Ragnar Axelsson, Kangertittivaq, East Greenland 1996. Axelsson, Ragnar. Last

Days of the Arctic. Reykjavik: Crymogea, 2013. Print.

Fig. 33. Ragnar Axelsson, A Husky waits for his food outside an old woman’s house in

Sermiligaaq, East Greenland, 1997. Axelsson, Ragnar. Last Days of the Arctic.

Reykjavik: Crymogea, 2013. Print.

Fig. 34. Ragnar Axelsson, Untitled, N.d. Last Days of the Arctic. Reykjavik: Crymogea,

2013. Print.

Fig. 35. Greenland, Untitled 1. Visit Greenland. “Greenland”. Visit Greenland. N.d. Web.

25, June, 2015. .

Fig. 36. Greenland, Untitled 2. Visit Greenland. “Greenland”. Visit Greenland. N.d. Web.

25, June, 2015. .

Fig. 37. Greenland, Untitled 3. Visit Greenland. “Greenland”. Visit Greenland. N.d. Web.

25, June, 2015. .

Fig. 38. Tiina Itkonen, Taateraaq, 2002. Tiina Itkonen. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, June, 2015.

Fig. 39. Tiina Itkonen, Jonas, 2002. Tiina Itkonen. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, June, 2015.

Fig. 40. Jette Bang, Godthåb / Nuuk, 1956. Bang, Jette. Jette Bang: From the Belly of the

Polar Bear. Nuussuaq, Greenland: Milik Publishing, 2014. Print.

Fig. 41. Jette Bang, Children in front of car, Julianehåb / Qaqortoq, 1956. Bang, Jette.

Jette Bang: From the Belly of the Polar Bear. Nuussuaq, Greenland: Milik Publishing,

2014. Print.

Fig. 42. Sarah Anne Johnson, Explosions 2011. Bulger, Stephen. “Sarah Anne Johnson”.

Stephen Bulger Gallery. Np. N.d. Web. 10, June, 2015. .

Fig. 43. Sarah Anne Johnson, Arctic Wonderland 2011. Stephen. “Sarah Anne Johnson”.

Stephen Bulger Gallery. Np. N.d. Web. 10, June, 2015. .

Fig. 44. Lars Tunbjørk, Kiruna, 2004. Decker, Julie. True North: Contemporary Art of the

Circumpolar North. Anchorage: Anchorage Museum, 2012. Print.

Fig. 45. Lars Tunbjörk, Stockholm 2006. Decker, Julie. True North: Contemporary Art of the Circumpolar North. Anchorage: Anchorage Museum, 2012. Print.

Fig. 46. Lars Tunbjörk, Stockholm 2004. Decker, Julie. True North: Contemporary Art of the Circumpolar North. Anchorage: Anchorage Museum, 2012. Print.

Fig. 47. Mette Tronvoll, Svalbard #7, 2014. “Svalbard”. Mette Tronvoll. N.p. 2014. Web.

20 April 2015. .

Fig. 48. Mette Trönvoll, Svalbard #6, 2014. “Svalbard”. Mette Tronvoll. N.p. 2014. Web.

20 April 2015. .

Fig. 49. Mette Tronvoll, Isortoq Unartoq #19, 1999. “Isortoq Unartoq”. Mette Tronvoll.

N.p. 2013. Web. 20 April 2015. .

Fig. 50. Jorma Puranen, Imaginary Homecoming, 1992. Wells, Liz. Land Matters:

Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity. London: I.B. Tauris, 2011. Print.

Fig. 51. Janet Biggs, Fade to White, 2010. Untitled Video Still 1. “Fade to White”. Janet

Biggs. 2010. Web. 20, April, 2015. .

Fig. 52. Janet Biggs, Fade to White, 2010. Janet Biggs. Untitled Video Still 2. “Fade to

White”. Janet Biggs. 2010. Web. 20, April, 2015. .

Fig. 53. Peter Sørensen, Food on the Table, Ilulissat 2011. Løgstrup, Pipaluk, Lykke. ISI

ØJE EYE. Greenland: Nebula, 2014. Print.

Fig. 54. Anja Weiss, Polar Bear Hunting, 2012. Løgstrup, Pipaluk, Lykke. ISI ØJE EYE.

Greenland: Nebula, 2014. Print.

Fig. 55. Dorthe-Marie Lynge, Christmas Morning, 2012. Løgstrup, Pipaluk, Lykke. ISI

ØJE EYE. Greenland: Nebula, 2014. Print.

Fig. 56. Agathe Storch, Our Ways, 2013. Løgstrup, Pipaluk, Lykke. ISI ØJE EYE.

Greenland: Nebula, 2014. Print.

Fig. 57. Søren Lababsen, The Dream of What is Waiting, 2004. Løgstrup, Pipaluk, Lykke.

ISI ØJE EYE. Greenland: Nebula, 2014. Print.

Fig. 58. Olaf Otto Becker, Gas and Firewood, N.d. Decker, Julie. True North:

Contemporary Art of the Circumpolar North. Anchorage: Anchorage Museum, 2012.

Print.

Fig. 59. Olaf Otto Becker, Above Zero, Swiss Camp, 05, 2008, Point 660, 2, Tourism,

Icecap, Greenland Icecap, Altitude 360M. Decker, Julie. True North: Contemporary Art of the Circumpolar North. Anchorage: Anchorage Museum, 2012. Print.

Fig. 60. Donald Weber, Oktyarbrskaya Settlement, Vorkuta, Russia. (N.d.). Decker, Julie.

True North: Contemporary Art of the Circumpolar North. Anchorage: Anchorage

Museum, 2012. Print.

Fig. 61. Subhankar Banerjee, Beluga Whale Hunt. Iñupiat and the Whales, 2007.

Subhankar Banerjee. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, July, 2015. .

Fig. 62. Subhankar Banerjee, Caribou Migration I: Oil and the Caribou, 2002.

Subhankar Banerjee. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, July, 2015. .

Fig. 63. Subhankar Banerjee, Installation View, Resource Wars, Sundaram Tagore

Gallery, New York 2008. Subhankar Banerjee. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, July, 2015.

Fig. 64. Kristine Thoreson, Ilulissat Icefjord from the Air, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 65. Kristine Thoreson, Mouth of the Ilulissat Icefjord and Location of Ilulissat from the Air (with airplane propeller), 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 66. Tiina Itkonen, Ilulissat 3, 2010. Itkonen, Tiina. Avannaa. Berlin: Kehrer Verlag,

2014. Print.

Fig. 67. Visit Greenland, Untitled. “Greenland”. Visit Greenland. N.d. Web. 25, June,

2015. .

xii

Fig. 68. Kristine Thoreson, Sled Dogs Behind Hotel Arctic, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 69. Kristine Thoreson, Tourist Photographing Iceberg from Second Story on our

Tour Boat, Eqi Glacier Tour, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 70. Kristine Thoreson, Returning to Ilulissat Harbour from Eqi Tour, Skiff in Wake,

2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 71. Kristine Thoreson, Breaking Ice, Installation View, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 72. Kristine Thoreson, Yellow Trail, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 73. Kristine Thoreson, Arctic Sparrow, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 74. Kristine Thoreson, Iceberg from Tour Boat, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the

Artist.

Fig. 75. Kristine Thoreson, Icebergs and Boat Deck, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the

Artist.

Fig. 76. Kristine Thoreson, List of Photographic Approaches, 2015.

Fig. 77. Kristine Thoreson Self-portrait as Expectant Tourist above Ilulissat Harbour,

Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 78. Kristine Thoreson Self-portrait as Solo Hiker on ‘Yellow Route’ Hike, Ilulissat

Greenland. 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 79. Kristine Thoreson Self-portrait as Tourist Getting Closer to the Icebergs,

Ilulissat Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 80. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 1, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 81. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 2, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 82. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 3, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 83. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 4, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

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Fig. 84. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 5, Ilulissat. 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 85. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 6, Ilulissat 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 86. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 7, Ilulissat. 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 87. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 8, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 88. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 9, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 89. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 10, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 90. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 11, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 91. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 12, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 92. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 13, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 93. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 14, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 94. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 15, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 95. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 16, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 96. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 17, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 97. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 18, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 98. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 19, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 99. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 20, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 100. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 21, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 101. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 22, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 102. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 23, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 103. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 24, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 104. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 25, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 105. Kristine Thoreson, A Walk in Town- Ilulissat, Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

xiv

Fig. 106. Kristine Thoreson, Skiff- Ilulissat, Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 107. Kristine Thoreson, Above the Tree line- Ilulissat, Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 108. Kristine Thoreson, Gone Hunting- Ilulissat, Greenland, 2014. Collection of the

Artist.

Fig. 109. Kristine Thoreson, At the Icy Café- Ilulissat, Greenland, 2014. Collection of the

Artist.

Fig. 110. Kristine Thoreson, Don’t Pet the Sled Dogs- Ilulissat, Greenland, 2014.

Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 111. Kristine Thoreson, Springtime- Ilulissat, Greenland, 2014. Collection of the

Artist.

Fig. 112. Kristine Thoreson, Ilulissat Hospital- Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 113. Kristine Thoreson Ilulissat Apartments- Greenland, 2014. Collection of the

Artist.

Fig. 114. Kristine Thoreson, Ilulissat Icefjord I –Soundscape, Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist. Fig. 115. Kristine Thoreson, Ilulissat Icefjord II - Soundscape, Greenland, 2014.

Collection of the Artist.

xv Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Why Greenland?

It is my view that particular, popular art photographers and a number of curators are collectively presenting a narrowly defined and restrictive image of a homogenous, peripheral and sublime Arctic. Selective perceptions of place, based on individual experience—as well as personal and commercial artistic interests—are being heavily circulated in the public realm; together they frame Greenland as a fragile, otherworldly, terra incognita. With the goal of garnering public support and offering awareness of what majesty there is to lose in our polar regions, many art photographers have painstakingly, and with much personal dedication, pictured Northern regions. Their breathtaking vistas of seemingly remote glaciers, icebergs, rivers of ice and sea ice offer a look at a part of the world that many people will never visit—and this is a point that makes their work wonderfully successful and also problematic.

Stunning photographs of ice-clad landscapes impress both general audiences and curators too. However, the power to shape global perceptions of place through art should not be taken lightly, and in the case of art photography, this occurs readily for two main reasons. Photographs inherently carry a connotation of truthfulness due to the historic use of photography as a medium of authentication, as well as because of its representational veracity (Tagg 4). Thus, photographs have long been thought of as ‘truthful’ as often as they have ‘artful’. Furthermore, because in the West we look at pictures of land as landscape we sometimes ignore important ideas contained within them—rich information about power relations, ownership, truth and representation and cultural identities. In the face of evocative and internationally published art photography of the north, we can lose

! 1! sight of the fact that local perceptions of place exist, as do local representations of the north. And these images made by both amateurs and professionals may differ completely from the few popular and grand artist monographs that are readily found in libraries and bookstores in major centers today.

These circumstances result in the framing of places, and in this case Greenland, in well-worn and limited ways, notions of a ‘great white north’, ‘frozen wonderland’, or peripheral ‘terra incognita’ are emphasized. Yet the notion of the North as a frozen, vacant and sublime space is not new. This research therefore examines how, and to what end, some contemporary art photographers borrow nineteenth century motifs while continuing a romanticized and narrow perspective of place that lacks relevance to modern times and peoples of the north. Furthermore, this research will show that what is needed in addition to their sublime depictions of Arctic vistas is continued research and professional production around alternative, diverse and local perspectives of place through which a variety of place perceptions are promoted locally and globally. Through research-creation, alternative perceptions of Arctic places (specifically in Greenland) are explored in this dissertation and new methods for the representation of Arctic landscapes are outlined and contextualized within contemporary, international art photography. The importance of place making through the production and circulation of art images within global culture is examined and examples that offer alternative presentations of Greenland,

Norway, and Finland are highlighted.

As a landscape photographer I am always looking at local, national and international exhibition listings and published books to see what is new or interesting in my field. Over the last few years I have noticed a number of striking photographs of

! 2! Arctic regions in art photography1, photojournalism and adventure photography2. I’ve found breathtaking, frozen landscapes featured in solo and group exhibitions in both galleries and museums and in monograph books and documentary films too. Snowy-white and windswept landscapes, towering, topaz-blue icebergs and mist-filled scenes of Arctic regions caught my eye and stirred my imagination. Upon further investigation I learned that numerous photographers have made large bodies of work that present far northern lands as relatively undeveloped, yet deeply threatened by global warming. I discovered a vast field of recent Arctic art photographs by Olaf Otto Becker (Germany), Tiina Itkonen

(Finland), Camille Seaman (USA), Sarah Anne Johnson (Canada), David Burdeny

(Canada), Axel Hütte (Germany), Darren Almond (UK) and photojournalism or adventure photographs by Ragnar Axelsson (Iceland) and James Balog (USA). I was captivated by the icy beauty pictured in these photographs, I wanted to know more about the artists who made these images and about the places where the photographs were taken. And, I wanted to go make some of my own.

In June of 2014 I travelled to Ilulissat Greenland—during this trip I finally got a chance to witness the grandiose icebergs in person, all of the photographs that I had seen !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 By art photography I mean work that primarily appears in the context of established private galleries such as the Julie Saul gallery in New York, or the Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto, ON. Or they may appear in public museums such as the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, AB as well as art magazines such as Aperture (USA) or Canadian Art for example. And / or art that is made by photographers who are considered artists, as opposed to other possible kinds of image makers, and who often (but not always) hold Bachelor of Fine Art or Master of Fine Arts degrees. 2 By photojournalism I mean work that aims to tell a story through pictures in the tradition of newspaper and magazine reportage, and made by photographers who often do not have formal education in art, but rather in journalism. By adventure photography I mean work that is made by people from a variety of backgrounds and that often involves travels to distant or unique places for difficult and specialized activities. These kinds of photographs primarily appear in editorial magazines such as National Geographic, or in adventure book format as in Ice: Portraits of Vanishing Glaciers by James Balog (Rizzoli 2012).

! 3! and essays that I had read were still swirling around in my mind. As a very informed audience of photography and photographic art history and theory (one with a BFA and an

MFA in photographic art) I was surprised to discover the difference between looking at a photograph of an iceberg, and actually being there to witness one—a point I will elaborate on in chapter one of this thesis. Icebergs are, of course, embedded within a landscape that has geologic and cultural history. Icebergs and glacial landscapes are accessible for photographers in a few prime locations globally, yet the resulting landscape photographs appear very similar. Images from Greenland, Svalbard Norway, Russia,

Iceland, Newfoundland Canada, Alaska and other regions are easily conflated. Thus, I discovered that what is left out of the frame in the art photographs (and out of the catalogues and monographs) that I had been admiring was as important as what had been included.

Travelling to Greenland allowed me to see the landscapes in person to get a sense of place and community, and to understand what art photographers had been including and excluding from the photographic frame. Ultimately, I was surprised to discover that I had been mesmerized by the photographic representations that I had seen. I ‘believed’ in what they showed me and thought of the Arctic as a kind of uniform, distant, rugged and beautiful ice-clad wonderland with few communities. So taken with the sublime representations of ice and snow, I hadn’t given much thought about conventions of photographic framing being used, the cultures that live amidst or near the ice, or the differences between Arctic regions. Once on location, I discovered a different kind of

Greenland, one that I did not see represented by any of the above noted photographers.

! 4!

Fig. 1. Tiina Itkonen, Icefjord II, 2005. Tiina Itkonen. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, June, 2015. .!

The above photograph by Tiina Itkonen (fig. 1.) serves as a brief example here before I go on to discuss further examples at length in the coming sections. This photograph offers the viewer an encounter with the strange, and awe-inspiring polar North. The blue grey tones of ice appear like mountains stretching across a perfectly framed panoramic view.

Yet the moody sky and dark water hint at the unforgiving nature of the landscape despite the beauty pictured. Itkonen’s photograph above is characteristic of the ones by other prominent artists who have photographed Greenland and other Arctic regions. But, as I discovered, there is much more to Greenland than just icy views. So where were these other kinds of representations? Why were there so many prominent artists and exhibitions featuring the sublime North?

My research question became clear: If in contemporary landscape photography

(within an international art context) there exists a popular aesthetic of the ‘sublime

North’, how might this aesthetic have developed, and how might it inform or restrict other visual narratives of northern places in international landscape photography? What alternative narratives of ‘the North’ may be created through visual inquiry? What aesthetic and conceptual strategies may be used to investigate these narratives, and what

! 5! further questions of place and identity might be provoked? How can a research-creation project explore these questions?

The experience of discovering first hand the distance between my subjective experience of the Arctic and a compelling, artistic representation of someone else’s, underpins the present research. Ultimately, I found that my own perceptions of Greenland and my own artistic interest in representing its landscapes were different to what the other well known and widely published landscape photographers have presented. Their landscape photographs largely follow an established and popular presentation of place as a scenic view and are infused with beautiful and sublime undertones that make for compelling, emotionally striking and even commercially successful images. (Admittedly, so compelling were the images that they inspired me to travel North to see things for myself.) In most cases, accompanying essays and introductions to the monographs and exhibitions position the photographic images as art that seeks to raise awareness and call people to action regarding climate change and the real impact that it’s having in Arctic regions. Thus, emotionally charged landscapes that inspire a sense of awe and amazement seem a perfect choice for doing the work of garnering public interest and support for environmental protection.

Together with these realizations, I uncovered a variety of alternative representations of the North taken in a variety of regions, and will elaborate on these approaches and their more subtle presence within contemporary art in chapter two of this thesis. Firstly though, I will outline more specifically what I have identified as being a unifying theme amidst the popular landscape photography by photographers working in

Greenland: Olaf Otto Becker, Tiina Itkonen and Camille Seaman. With regard to the art photographs made in Greenland, there is an overwhelming tendency to present Greenland

! 6! as “otherworldly” and the photographs are often tinged with a modern sense of Burkean sublime (Tøjner and Seeberg 5). This I realized, is a deliberate, aesthetic choice made by the artists. Arctic researcher Robert McGhee writes:

In records left by scholars of early civilizations, the Arctic was one of those

distant and fantastic lands. No traveller’s tale of the North was too bizarre to be

believed. It is startling to realize that remnants of this view still cling to the

region. (19)

McGhee goes on to conclude that “[t]o most southerners the Arctic remains what it was to their counterparts centuries and perhaps even millennia ago: the ultimate otherworld”

(Ibid). Throughout this essay I trace the history of these fantastic notions of the Arctic and refer to certain contemporary and historic photographs as ‘otherworldly’. It is this quote from McGhee that I mean to refer back to and the idea that the Arctic was thought of, and still is to some, a distant and fantastic place.

The term sublime will also be used readily and throughout my research I have found that it is very often associated with landscape and iceberg photography. It is used to describe a variety of powerful emotions. In the book Landmark: The Fields of Landscape

Photography by William A. Ewing, David Mitchell writes:

The word ‘sublime’ appears regularly in texts by critics and photographers,

although its meaning has shifted considerably since Edmund Burke’s seminal

Inquiry in the eighteenth century. Burke believed that a feeling of terror was

central to the concept; before nature’s greatest forces, all mankind’s artifices

were insignificant. (28)

! 7!

Likewise, Simon Morley discusses the origins and development of the term sublime in his book The Sublime. He points out that Edmunde Burke (1729-1797 Ireland) shifted the meaning of the word towards experiences provoked by a vast or unknown nature rather than philosophical queries into the human experience (Morley 15). Burke was interested in the “experience of the beholder” and the mixture of fear and delight that he felt could transform the self (Ibid)3.

David Mitchell goes on to outline other kinds of sublime that have emerged since the Burkean, including the industrial and the technological sublime—each share in the core concept of feeling the horror of something, tinged with a thrill (D. Mitchell 28-9).

For example, feelings of horrified astonishment evoked while looking at Edward

Burtynsky’s (b. 1955 Canada) industrial landscapes are the more modern and industrially derived sense of the sublime. Rather than the vast and unknown nature, we gaze upon fields of industry that are unfamiliar and shocking in the scale of operations. His artfully composed views, for example, of an oil field (see fig. 2) provides visual evidence of the volume of resource extraction required to power a modern world.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 For further information on the history of the development of the sublime, see The Sublime by Simon Morley pages 12-21.

! 8! Fig. 2. Ed Burtynsky, Socar Oil Fields #1ab, Baku Azerbaijan, 2006. Edward Burtynsky. N.p. N.d. Web. 15, July, 2015.

Whereas much of the world’s population will never encounter such places in person,

Burtynsky’s photographs are able to show us what it takes to feed the global demand for energy. What’s more, the audience can grasp the even wider impact this scene tells of when they understand that this is but one oil field in one region among myriad sites around the world just the same. And, with regard to Burtynsky’s industrial landscape oeuvre, it is but one shocking landscape among the many that he has visited and photographed. Burtynsky’s ‘horrific sublime’ aesthetic is created through the juxtaposition of elements. Industrial and ‘ugly’ sites are rendered surprisingly delightful through the use of harmonious compositions, soft evening light and the pastel tones of sky and sand.

Similarly, in the photography of icebergs and wintery landscapes, sublime is a term used to suggest the evocation of a feeling of terror in the face of a mighty and unforgiving nature. Just as we may feel awed by the contrast of sprawling industrial machinery against the beauty of a sunset or personally insignificant and powerless to support clean energy options standing amidst hundreds of oil derricks, we can feel tiny and powerless against the forces of ice in the Arctic. David Mitchell offers Olaf Otto

Becker’s Ilulissat Icefjord 5, 07 2003 (see fig. 3) as an example of this kind of sublime wherein the ice wall towers over the water like a mountain making the viewer feel the full weight and might of the glacial ice in the unwelcoming black water.

! 9!

Fig. 3. Olaf Otto Becker, Ilulissat Icefjord 5, 07/ 2003 69˚ 11’59” N, 51˚ 08’08” W Olaf Otto Becker. N.d. N.p. Web. 10, April, 2015. .

Chauncey Loomis explains in his seminal essay The Arctic Sublime that mountainous regions were the first sites to inspire the sublime, he writes:

Exaltation and terror, liberation and acrophobia, a mixed sense of triumph and

defeat—these emotions vitalized responses to mountains in the eighteenth and

early nineteenth centuries, and they would vitalize responses to the Arctic during

the Victorian period. (98)

He goes on to explain that part of what made the Victorians favour sublime images of the

Arctic (in literature and art) was the mystery and strangeness that came out of it. Over decades of Arctic exploration, repeated unsuccessful attempts to find a Northwest passage, a lack of detailed knowledge of the terrain, and unfamiliar stories of weather, people and animals, the British public formed ideas of their own that were a “compound

! 10! of fact and fantasy touched with the power of Sublime” (Loomis 103). The public interest in the Arctic sublime spread through literature and art into Europe and North America and when the British interest was dampened for a time by the loss of the Franklin expedition, painters Frederick Church and William Bradford still found success with their sublime landscapes in America (Loomis 111).

Indeed, the art photographs of Greenland that I have viewed by Becker, Itkonen and Seaman re-call the Victorian sublime feelings of awe, insignificance, exaltation and terror. Their unfamiliar, fantastic scenes evoke for me imagined ideas of an extreme place with bitter cold and very few modern resources. From the art photographs I saw, I imagined Greenland to be a place largely unoccupied with long dangerous trips required for travel between settlements. I even started to wonder if I had any business at all trying to go there myself. Perhaps I wasn’t cut out for this kind of research after all? Alas, these feelings are connected to the sublime aesthetic—J.A.P. Alexander explains that contemporary depictions in the tradition of the sublime “elicit a reflection of the viewer’s inconsequentiality in relation to the awesome power of nature” (123).

Furthermore I am not, after all, alone in my imagined thoughts of Greenland and the Arctic, and Robert McGhee explains why: “[s]tories, the true and the false, have gradually accumulated to form the vision of a distant and fantastic Arctic as seen through the window of Western culture” (McGhee 10). He goes on to say that “[t]his Arctic is not so much a region as a dream; the dream of a unique, unattainable and compellingly attractive world. It is the last imaginary place” (Ibid). The photographs that I had been looking at did in fact do a very good job at upholding McGhee’s observation and made me long for this imaginary place. If not always sublime, then the photographs of Arctic places that caught my attention surely can be thought of as emphasizing the strangeness

! 11! and ‘otherworldly’ kind of the landscapes found there. And that unfamiliarity of place invites imagination and mystery. Yet when I arrived in Greenland, I was sharply reminded of the extent to which photographers can frame a view and lead a viewer to certain conclusions. I understood first hand the difference between experiencing a place, and experiencing a photograph of a place—and I sought to create some new kinds of images that would present an all together different point of view than the sublime.

Detailed examples of this process will be covered in chapter two.

In the contemporary art photographs of Greenland I also noticed that coupled with this notion of the sublime and ‘last imaginary place’ there is a great deal of emphasis on climate change. A strong call to action to protect Northern regions against global warming is made through an introductory essay in the monograph: Melting Away

(Princeton Architectural Press, Seaman 2015); the curated group exhibition Seeing

Glacial Time: Climate Change in the Arctic (Tufts University (Massachusetts, 2014); the photographic books Vanishing Landscapes (Frances Lincoln Limited, 2008) and Ragnar

Axelsson: Last Days of the Arctic (Crymogea, 2013); and in the introductory essay by

Gerry Badger “Take Me Back to the Frozen North, The Greenland Photographs of Olaf

Otto Becker” in Becker’s Broken Line (Hatje Cantz, 2007). To provide a lengthier example of the emphasis there is on climate change in relation to art photography projects in the Arctic, another example follows. The Director of Kiasma Museum of

Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland Pirkko Siitari, states “[t]he beauty of Itkonen’s images belies an ugly truth. Global warming is causing the polar ice caps to melt, radically altering the fragile ecosystem and traditional livelihoods of the Inuit in an alarmingly brief time span”. Siitari goes on to explain “[e]cology is an inescapable theme

! 12! in Itkonen’s photographs inviting us to consider the special value of the Arctic region and the local and global ramifications of climate change”.

Images of icebergs can be found almost everywhere. They have been a popular subject to explore art photography, painting and popular culture and have come to symbolize hidden dimensions of the mind or soul, spiritual transcendence, or courageous strength from Victorian times through until now (Gopnik 45-47). From Canadian artist and Group of Seven member Lawren Harris’s painting titled Icebergs, Davis Strait (1930) to Sheila Metzner’s photograph on the cover of Sara Wheeler’s travelogue The Magnetic

North: Notes from the Arctic Circle (2011), the dramatic topaz blue and sparkling white iceberg has been, and remains, a potent symbol of the wild North (Ibid). Today it is used also as a key image that pulls at the heart-strings of the public, and through a sublime evocation asks people to protect a mysterious, fragile yet harsh and largely imagined

North. Though it’s now mapped and even more populated, as well as full of industry and tourism, the Arctic as an imaginary place lingers in the minds of more southern populations. Yet, my experience of icebergs and other Northern landscapes in Greenland was not always sublime. Neither in terms of my encounter with a so-called remote, extreme environment nor in my experience in visiting one of the most affected areas of the globe by climate change (Archer and Rahmstorf 9).

Rather, although I went to Greenland in the capacity of a researcher and artist, my experience was quite comfortable and urban. To make photographs of icebergs and Arctic landscapes I didn’t have to bravely rent and operate an inflatable Zodiac and travel all alone up the ‘wild’ coasts of Greenland as I feared that would have to—just as art photographer Olaf Otto Becker has. Nor did I need to live in tents and small villages with local families for months on end like Tiina Itkonen. I simply took a plane from Calgary,

! 13! made one connection in Reykjavik, Iceland and was picked up at the airport by my hotel shuttle. I had booked my hotel in advance online through www.booking.com. It was a newly built and modernly designed hotel in a town of around five thousand local Danish and Inuit people. Everyone whom I encountered spoke very good English and tour companies were plentiful and well organized for the most part. Many of the people that I encountered were of either Greenlandic-Inuit or Danish decent and could speak English,

Danish and Greenlandic.

! During my weeklong stay, I photographed the ice from the streets of the town and from the deck of mid sized tourist boats alongside dozens of other tourists who had come to see the ice as well. Mythic notions of the a wild, frozen, threatened and ‘great white

North’ that I had witnessed in the above mentioned art photography evaporated in front of me as I sat in the eighteen degree Celsius, June sunshine drinking a latté on the deck of a shop on the main street in town. Following Yi-Fu Taun’s definition of myth, I mean a belief that is not easily verified or proven false (Tuan 85). Mythic space is defined as “a fuzzy area of defective knowledge surrounding the empirically known” that “is a conceptual extension of the familiar and workaday spaces given by direct experience”

(Tuan 86). Thus as I sat drinking my coffee I was struck by the incongruity between the fuzzy kind of knowledge of an Arctic place that I had derived from art photographs, and the fact of the parents, children, tourists, water trucks and shuttles that streamed by within site of the dramatic looking icebergs on location in Ilulissat.

Once again, the same experience repeated itself when I compared the impressions that I had gained from photographs, with what I experienced when I went for a hike along

! 14! the famous Ilulissat Icefjord. Since it has been a World Heritage Site since 2004, there is a well-maintained and marked trail spray-painted with yellow dots. It led me along a path alongside other visitors, who just like me, held published maps to guide them. The icefjord was packed with icebergs, tourist boats dotted the water, and hikers travelled the walking trail with cameras and books in hand. All the while the magnificent ice heaved and cracked mysteriously beside me—the fuzzy realm of the imaginary became at once even more fantastic, yet also more grounded in the empirically known at the same time.

Following the hike I ate pizza and drank a Coca-Cola on the patio of the Icy Café, and I wondered if Olaf Otto Becker had eaten there before me. These kinds of events characterized my weeklong stay, and ironically, during that time I did not see any recycling carts.

Thus, I learned through practice what theory had already taught me. Photographs are, for one thing, slices of a subjective reality that when separated, as images, from the scene (and timeframe) from which they were taken, can tell incomplete or even misleading stories. Author and artist Deborah Bright, in writing about the genre of landscape in art, states that “[w]hether noble, picturesque, sublime or mundane, the landscape image… is a selected and constructed text” and that the social significance of the decision to include or exclude subject matter within a landscape is rarely considered

(126). Having been now to Greenland, I understand that the Arctic art photographs that I have seen show only a select and deliberately framed view, and that view is chosen according to particular art historical, societal or personal interests. This is of course not saying anything new. Yet with regard to photographs of the Arctic, and because

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 4 Experience Kangia, Ilulissat icefjord Greenland, Ilulissat Icefjord Office, 2013.

! 15! Greenland is still one of those less travelled, ‘off the beaten track’ kind of places, it becomes an important point. It is important because viewers of art photographs who reside outside of Greenland (or Northern regions) may be unaware of any other kinds of northern landscape possibilities, and perhaps already aware of the imaginary ones that

McGhee has described.

In keeping with the notion of art as a medium through which we can tell stories,

Deborah Bright further suggests that we should ask questions of landscape art that go beyond what has been included or excluded from the frame. We should also ask, “what ideologies landscape photographs perpetuate; in whose interests they were conceived;

[and] why we still desire to make and consume them” (Ibid). For this thesis project then, practice-based research within a research-creation model has been uniquely helpful. It has allowed me the opportunity to encounter a tremendously foreign space (to me) and compare it to existing representations so that I can ask these questions and more importantly, begin to answer them from a place of first-hand experience. I can read in books about the difference between a representation and a personal experience and I can even read about the North and about modern access to once hard-to-get-to places in the

Arctic. Yet nothing can compare to the experience of going there and travelling through

Greenland myself. Nothing could make me understand the decisions around framing

Greenlandic landscapes like walking through them and taking the same pathways in

Ilulissat that some of the other artists before me have.

1.2 The Photographic Artists

Before, during and after my return home from Greenland, I gathered all of the information I could about contemporary art photography about the Arctic. I found work

! 16! that featured Svalbard Norway, Greenland, Iceland, Russia, Finland, USA and curatorial projects that featured the more general theme of ‘the North’. After tracking down all of the published artist monographs and after examining all of the gallery exhibitions and reviews that were available in Calgary, in Ilulissat Greenland and online, I have drawn some conclusions. Before I outline the specific examples at length, I will start by stating that it is clear that in contemporary, widely-published, art photography from the past fifteen years, Arctic landscapes are very often presented as ever-frozen, otherworldly spaces dotted with sparsely populated villages or majestic icebergs afloat and alone in a dramatic seascape. They are characteristically made by North American and European interlopers and are depictions that perpetuate historic and colonial-based notions of polar- regions as peripheral and sublime. They also reflect a tradition of landscape as an art of

“‘topographic views”; views that are pictured according to established modes of representation that are based on harmonious compositions rather than the above outlined culturally based questions (S. Bright 48). Why they have been, and remain, so popular in the public eye over time will be discussed in the coming pages.

For reasons of keeping to a manageable scope and defined terrain, I have chosen to examine these characteristics of photography of Greenland specifically, a place that has attracted a great deal of attention from art photographers and photojournalists over the past fifteen years. I will primarily discuss three artists whose work is found readily in major gallery exhibitions and published monograph collections. They have each made

Greenland a major subject of study, and published their works widely in exhibition and monograph formats; they are Olaf Otto Becker (b. 1959 Germany), Camille Seaman (b.

1969 USA), and Tiina Itkonen (b. 1968 Finland). While there are many art photographers who have made Arctic landscapes, these three have made a dedicated and long-standing

! 17! effort to picture Greenland, often making repeated trips, over the past fifteen years.

Although it is only one out of the eight circumpolar nations that exist today, these photographic artists seem to favour Greenland as the Arctic location of choice. This is likely due to the fact that one of the primary research locations for the scientific study of glaciers and icebergs in the world is the Ilulissat Icefjord. It is located on the edge of

Greenland’s third largest city, population approximately 5000, bearing the same name and it is relatively easy to get to if you can manage the sometimes-substantial expense

(Ilulissat Kangia).

A multitude of icebergs are visible from the city at any time of the year. Breaking off from the famous Ilulissat Icefjord, the icebergs remain grounded for long periods of time due to a sand bar near the mouth of the fjord. The icefjord is approximately sixty- five kilometers long and is packed with icebergs which are pushed out through the fjord to open water taking between three and twelve months to complete the journey (Ilulissat

Icefjord Office 10-11). As they slowly melt and shift with the tides, they break lose and eventually continue their journey, first north along the coast of Greenland, until they meet the Labrador Current. They then travel south and slowly make their way as far as

Newfoundland Canada along the Labrador Current before melting away into the ocean.

While each of the three photographers offer slightly different scenes of Greenlandic landscapes, they all picture beautiful icebergs isolated from shore and adrift in mesmerizing blue /green seas.

The remaining artists, from those listed in my introduction, Axel Hütte (b. 1951

Germany), David Burdeny (b. 1968 Canada), Darren Almond (b. 1971 UK), James Balog

(b. 1952 USA) and Ragnar Axelsson (b. 1976 Iceland) are referenced here to testify as to the popularity of Arctic landscapes today. Due to geographic and stylistic differences in

! 18! their works, these artists remain outside of my main thesis. They have, for example, made projects about Arctic regions other than (or in addition to) Greenland as is the case with

Darren Almond. Or they work within other genres of photography that would require related yet distinct comparative analysis, as is the case with Ragnar Axelsson and James

Balog. Still others have photographed Greenland as only one small project within a larger repertoire of landscape or conceptual art thematics; this is the case with Axel Hütte and

David Burdeny. Hütte and Burdeny have also photographed the Antarctic as part of their oeuvres. Further examples of additional photographers’ works will be discussed in chapter two and used to illustrate specific concepts or to offer points of comparison in specific places.

In addition to showing their photographs at local, national or international venues, the main three artists, Becker, Seaman and Itkonen, have each published artist monographs as well. Becker’s Broken Line (2007 Hatje Cantz), Itkonen’s Avannaa (2015

Kehrer Verlag) and Seaman’s Melting Away (2015 Princeton Architectural Press) feature beautifully crafted colour landscape photographs from all over Greenland, specifically

Western Greenland in Becker’s case, North, West, South and East Greenland for Itkonen and East and West Greenland for Seaman. As I’ve mentioned, all of the above named photographers make work that revolves around two main thematics: an ancient and lasting impression of the Arctic as an otherworldly, peripheral and sublime place, and urgent global and local environmental concerns with regard to climate change.

After viewing each monograph and each exhibition what stands out is the similarity between the representational strategies that each artist chooses. What emerges is an overall impression of Greenland that is presented through the use (and re-use) of well-worn narratives: the otherworldly and sublime, the last pristine or unspoiled place,

! 19! the ‘primitive’ culture on the periphery of society, or the space of male, heroic survival.

After reviewing a wide range of visual and literary sources (to be discussed shortly), it is clear that these motifs are tied to long-standing notions about Arctic regions that can be traced back to the Ancient Greeks, early Norse explorers from the ninth century, and

North American and European polar explorers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Specific examples will be discussed in chapter one. The historically informed motifs gain new relevance and ‘power’ in modern culture due to mounting concerns regarding the serious and wide-ranging effects of climate change.

Indeed, the contemporary photographs made of Greenland that I am studying are tied to a larger field of historical, international, local, multicultural and multidisciplinary study. Greenland is placed both amidst and apart from other polar nations within all of this literature. My knowledge therefore has been gleaned from chapters and paragraphs set within larger texts and more rarely, from sources where some aspect of Greenland is featured and examined alone. Studies of Greenland often cross over with studies of polar exploration, art history, anthropology of Inuit cultures, archaeology, climate change, travel literature, and ongoing scientific or cultural conversations about the North, the

Arctic, or of circumpolar regions. The complex topic of northern representation is described by the International Laboratory for the Comparative Multidisciplinary Study of

Representations of the North as follows:

In the 20th century, the North has been portrayed as an elusive land of conquest

that recedes ever further the closer one comes to it. These representations of the

North are not mere descriptions of a geographic place; rather they constitute a

fascinating multicultural discourse uniquely nourished by various strata of ancient

cultures (ancient Greece, the Vikings), taken up by European cultures (particularly

! 20! France and Germany), revised by Nordic cultures (Scandinavia, Canada, Québec

and Finland) and, today, brought into question by Aboriginal cultures. (Imaginaire

Nord)

Because discussions about representations of the Arctic, and Greenland specifically, are so diverse, it requires a degree of endurance to piece together the sources of information with regard to modern and historic notions of this place. What is discovered is that there is no single story, no ‘true’ description of Greenland as a particular kind of place. Each

‘picture’ is reflective of an individual’s experience at one situated moment in time.

Likewise, each contemporary photographer’s work that I examine tells, with personal honesty and artistic integrity, only one part of a larger story from the perspective of their own particular historical moment and circumstance.

Having said that, it is with varying degrees of engagement with the modern realities found in the well developed, resource rich and self-governed Inuit / Danish country of 56,000 people that the above noted art photographers engage. Author and

Professor in Photographic Culture at Plymouth University (UK) Liz Wells explains that

“[o]ne of the functions of art is to explore and comment upon individual and social worlds of experience. Historically art has been understood as contributing to myths and discourses which inform ways of making sense of and responding to cultural phenomena”

(Photography: A Critical Introduction 282). It is my view therefore that the above artists in fact collectively (and unintentionally) present a narrowly defined notion of the Arctic.

Selective perceptions of place based on individual experience and personal as well as commercial artistic interest are being heavily circulated and in my opinion create a false impression of Greenland (one that is borrowed from the eighteen hundreds) as a terra

! 21! incognita. Indeed, the work of the art photographers that I will discuss affects global notions of Arctic places in important ways because art photographs inherently carry a connotation of truthfulness due to the history of photography as a medium of authentication, as noted earlier. Because climate change has been associated with these photographs, through the work of artists and curators, the power of the sublime now has fresh cultural significance. Together these circumstances result in the framing of

Greenland in specific and restrictive ways, and what’s more, unproductive and perhaps even self-serving ways—a point that will be fleshed out shortly.

The technical quality and compositional integrity of these artists’ photographs is exceptional. While it is true that creating awe-inspiring photographs for the pleasure of it or for the purpose of promoting an appreciation for polar-regions makes for legitimate and valuable work. It is also true that taking a wider view of a whole field can reveal important beliefs that we hold. Re-examining the production and circulation of these recently made photographs through the lens of critical cultural studies, rather than in terms of art history or environmental concern, will underline the ways in which photography creates and sustains place perceptions. These perceptions are important in terms of local and global attitudes about both real and imagined notions of the Arctic. To begin, I will present an overview of each artist’s work and the contexts within which they are created and presented. I will then provide an analysis of the notions of place that emerge, links to historic practices and the implications for Greenland and the Arctic.

1.3 Olaf Otto Becker

Olaf Otto Becker is a German photographic artist who has a background in communication design (Augsburg) and philosophy (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat,

! 22! Munich). His recent project titled Broken Line is a photographic monograph published by

Hatje Cantz in 2007. It is available for purchase online in North America from retailers such as amazon.com and amaon.ca. It is also widely available in large bookstores such as

Chapters and Indigo. The monograph is a cloth-covered, landscape-format book with full- page plates and evaluative essays. The series offers gorgeous, wide angle, colour views of landscapes and homes along the coastlines of Western Greenland. The hardcover features seventy-two plates of large-format (8x10) colour photographs taken between 2003 and

2006. In his essay in Broken Line, Gerry Badger states that Becker’s photographs are demonstrative of the grandeur and beauty of Greenland and that they are important records of a place that is rapidly changing due to climate change (11). We then learn from the closing essay in Broken Line “Ways and Lines” by Christoph Schaden, that Becker travelled alone by Zodiac along the coast lines of Western Greenland in order to make a seemingly “anachronistic” journey (141). Having been taught how to navigate the rubber boat by a local Inuk person, Becker returned year after year in the summer months of

2003, 2004 and 2006 to capture what Schaden refers to as an “artlessly raw idyll” (140).

Becker himself explains that what drew him to the project in the first place was his keen interest in the soft colours of the unique Northern light. He also states “[w]hen I am photographing, I am very conscious of what this same view might look like in fifty or one hundred years’ time… [h]ow will it have changed? Will all the ice and snow be gone?”

(Badger 10). He goes on to say that his interest is in the crafting of an image, and any documentary–like qualities found in his work are just an added plus (Ibid).

Becker’s Broken Line project begins with a series of misty icebergs bathed in subtle colours, taken near the jagged edges of the Ilulissat Icefjord. A Burkean sense of terrifying sublime is easily conjured through the use of light that emphasizes the

! 23! blackness of the sea, the jagged, tall peaks of the ice and a touch of fog that lends an air of mystery to a number of his images (see fig. 4. and fig. 5.).

Fig. 4. Olaf Otto Becker, Ilulissat Icefjord 6, 07/2003, 69°11’58’’ N, 51°07’08’’ W. Olaf Otto Becker. N.d. N.p. Web. 10, April, 2015. .

Fig. 5. Olaf Otto Becker, Ilulissat Icefjord 3, 07 / 2003, 69° 11’ 59” N, 51° 14’ 02” W. Olaf Otto Becker. N.d. N.p. Web. 10, April, 2015. .

! 24!

Yet, there are other kinds of iceberg, glacier and landscape images represented in his book too. These photographs emphasize the strangeness or the unfamiliar aspects of the

Arctic landscape (to more southern eyes). As the pages turn, rocky landscapes, faded

Scandinavian style wooden houses and impressive icebergs awash in soft pink and blue light lead the reader on a voyage (see fig. 6.). When I see these photographs, I think of

Robert McGhee’s words, and that these photographs both illustrate and evoke dreams of the Arctic as that “last imaginary place” (Ibid).

Fig. 6. Olaf Otto Becker, Ilulissat Icefjord 09, 07/2003, 69°11’50’’ N, 51°12’54’’ W. Olaf Otto Becker. N.d. N.p. Web. 10, April, 2015. .

Along the rugged, and seemingly sparsely peopled shorelines of Western Greenland,

Becker guides the viewer and gradually constructs an impression of an idyllic, sometimes sublime and occasionally picturesque Greenland. The picturesque is a term that originated in Europe to describe a style of painting that originated outside of the established academy of art; it was associated with political and social change and combined elements

! 25! of order and chaos, old and new (Kitchener-Waterloo Gallery 6-7). Becker’s picturesque images retain that original flavour of combined elements and, as the contemporary picturesque is defined, raise questions about “the relationship between nature and its multifarious uses (Kitchener-Waterloo Gallery 9)”. Through Becker’s framed views,

Western Greenland then emerges as a place of calm weather, wide open spaces punctuated with enormous slabs of sculpted ice and messy, make-shift dwellings that incorporate modern and traditional ways of life (see fig.7.).

Fig. 7. Olaf Otto Becker, 827 Nuussuaq, 07 / 200674° 06’ 45” N, 57° 03’ 32” W. Becker, Olaf Otto. Broken Line. Ostfildern: Hatje CantzVerlag, 2007. Print.

Only occasionally does Becker present somewhat gloomy scenes within this series; here he flirts with the notion that not everything in Western Greenland is as aesthetically attractive and peaceful as it may seem (see fig.8. and fig. 9.).

! 26!

Fig. 8. Olaf Otto Becker, Ikerasak, Qarajaqs Icefjord 1, 07 / 2005, 70° 29’46” N, 51° 18’ 14” W. Becker, Olaf Otto. Broken Line. Ostfildern: Hatje CantzVerlag, 2007. N. pag. Print.

Fig. 9. Olaf Otto Becker, Qimmeq, Nuussuaq, 07 / 2006, 74° 06’ 36” N, 57° 03’ 32” W. Broken Line. Ostfildern: Hatje CantzVerlag, 2007. N. pag. Print.

Each image in this collection is titled, as above, with coordinates and a generally descriptive location such as Ilulissat Icefjord, Disko Bay, Rodebay, Sermeq Silardleq and

! 27! onward through the places that he encounters. The journey ends at approximately the same latitude and location that William Bradford’s famous art expedition to Greenland in

1869 did5. It is easy to see that the quality of light found here is unique. As it envelops each landscape in a soft glow of the midnight sun, his wide-angle photographs could perhaps promote relaxation and tranquility of mind or intensify the isolation imagined in such a remote landscape—as viewed by non-local eyes (see fig. 10.).

Fig. 10. Olaf Otto Becker, Oquaatsut 5, 07/2003,69°19’57’’ N, 51°00’23’’ W. Olaf Otto Becker. N.d. N.p. Web. 10, April, 2015. .

Gerry Badger also associates Becker’s work with the American School of “large- format colour photographers” such as Stephen Shore (b. 1947 USA) and Joel Sternfeld (b.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 5 In 1869, William Bradford along with John Dunmore and George Critcherson toured Greenland by boat for the purpose of making art. Sailing from St. John’s Newfoundland, the expedition lasted three full months and resulted in the publication of his book titled The Arctic Regions: illustrated with photographs taken on an art expedition to Greenland. The primary purpose of this unique expedition was simply to make art, and in 1873 the published book featured 141 large albumen prints (the first paper print produced from a negative. (Potter 190)

! 28! 1944 USA) (10). This group of photographers characteristically creates photographs of

“man-altered” landscapes and responds to scenes that they encounter, as opposed to selecting them ahead of time for a specific reason (Ibid). Badger also likens Becker’s images in Broken Line to a sub-set of this school known as the New Topographics; a group that took their name from William Jenkins who curated an exhibition of their work titled “Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” in 1975. Photographers included in this exhibition presented banal, black and white, critical images of urban or altered landscapes and their style became known as the New Topographics approach. Their photographers, such as Lewis Baltz (1945 –2014 USA), Robert Adams (b. 1937 USA) and Stephen

Shore, chose to photograph suburban neighbourhoods, clear-cut forests, industrial structures and other previously overlooked kinds of places.

The New Topographics work specifically, is thought of as a counter-movement to the established canons of landscape photography that, for a brief example, sought to capture the beauty of the striking forms of nature as with the work of Paul Strand (1890-

1976 USA) or the pristine wilderness of Ansel Adams (1902-1984 USA). The New

Topographics photographers opened up the category of landscape and established a new way of working that allowed viewers to consider all kinds of places as ‘views’ worth looking at, and for more reasons than just formal beauty. Susan Bright explains that:

The New Topographics began not only to question critically the tradition of

photographing the landscape but also to comment upon growing political and

social issues that were affecting it. These included the spread of suburbia;

anonymous industrial sites; pollution and other environmental issues and the

disappearance of once pristine land. (49)

! 29! The point here is that Becker’s photographs continue in the art photography tradition of illustrating the loss of once pristine land. Becker’s landscape photography goes far beyond the work of amateur landscape photography or nature photography and exists within a culture of public presentation, is available for museum and private collection and commercial sales. In short, his approach is a careful, studied and informed by the history of art and photography. Many international, contemporary art photographers such as

Richard Misrach (b. 1949 USA), Ed Burtynsky (b. 1955 Canada) and Karin Apollonia

Müller (b. 1963 Germany) continue to work in the American School and New

Topographics traditions today photographing further ‘man-altered’ landscapes such as military test sites, industrial work sites and urban spaces.

To combine the beauty with destruction of various kinds is thought to be a more approachable way through which to make art that is both appealing and yet critiques modern and environmentally damaging processes. Within this context, it is easy to see the validity in presenting Becker’s work as part of this art historical lineage. Clearly there is a link between these environmentally concerned photographs—even if the critique comes more from the written essays than the stunning vistas of land and ice themselves. Indeed, the impact that humankind is having on Becker’s landscapes is less visible than in

Burtynsky’s, Misrach’s or Müller’s photographs. Presumably then, what is juxtaposed here in these images is the notion of the distant and foreign northern landscape that is otherworldly and beautiful, yet threatened by global warming. The irony of course, is that the most environmental damage is said to be occurring at the most fragile and least peopled of places—the Arctic (Ibid).

While Becker and other art photographers work to create stunning photographs that point to over-use and even abuse of natural resources around the world by various

! 30! human groups, they are sometimes criticized for making a living off terrible scenes of devastation. For example, columnist Greg Lindquist describes the paradox of Ed

Burtynsky’s work in his online article “Clicking While the Gulf Burns: Edward

Burtynsky’s Photography”:

While the glossy anesthetization of his images may inspire admiration and awe in

their visual experience, the subjects they capture invoke fear and trepidation as

they reveal our mistreatment of the earth. The photographs accomplish this awe

through a Romantic sensibility in dramatic and atmospheric light, wide sweeping

vistas (often from helicopters) and a general eye for abstraction in the landscape.

Lindquist goes on to state that Burtynsky’s photographs, while stunning, present a surface depiction that lacks depth and fails to offer anything more than a “facile sensibility” that has in fact made him a fortune. It is a clever body of work that Burtynsky makes. His photographs are stunning examples of large format photography, his scenes of industry do evoke feelings of awe for me, whether I see them in person in a gallery or in one of his monographs. And, his work does the important work of raising public awareness about resource extraction and the energy industry in the world today. It is easier to understand the concerns over mineral extraction when, for example, I see his image of an open pit coalmine in Canada (see fig. 11.).

! 31!

Fig. 11. Ed Burtynsky, Westar Open Pit Coal Mine, Sparwood, British Columbia, Canada, 1985. Edward Burtynsky. N.p. N.d. Web. 15, July, 2015. .

The critique that Lindquist makes, and that I do agree with, is that even though I have a greater understanding from Burtynsky’s photograph, there is little else gained. There is no mention on his website for example, of money from the sale of his prints going to any particular environmental cause; nor is there mention of a foundation set up to organize change. Burtynsky has been an invited guest at the famous TED Talks series, and has been awarded the title of Officer of the Order of Canada for his work. He maintains a difficult position as he has to be careful not to step too heavily on the toes of industry, lest he be barred from photographing future sites. On his personal website www.edwardburtynsky.com he explains his artistic and philosophical position:

These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence;

they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear.

We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or

unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence

! 32! on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the

health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images

function as reflecting pools of our times.

Like Burtynsky’s photographs, Becker’s too are surface depictions that generalize place and rely upon—even capitalize on—Western culture’s imagined notion of the North.

They offer little insight into the complexities of climate change, nor any solutions to the growing problem of global warming and the impact it is having on the people of the

North. Like Burtynsky’s, Becker’s photographs and monograph collections provide awareness through exquisite imagery. While criticisms have been made about

Burtynsky’s work, I have found nothing similar written about Becker’s. Yet for me, the issue is the same. Truly, fine photographic work is being done, and I love looking at the images and am impressed by their beauty and their presentation of new views of the world (to me). Yet I am eventually left wondering, what next? I am left asking those questions that Deborah Bright poses, and that are worth repeating here: “what ideologies landscape photographs perpetuate; in whose interests they were conceived; [and] why we still desire to make and consume them” (Ibid). Perhaps the issue is in the fact that although good work is being done by Burtynsky and Becker, it is no longer a new point of view that is presented.

For over ten years these art photographers have developed their stylistic approach—to be sure theirs is a styled and crafted manner of framing—through which they raise tough questions about the impact human-kind has on our environment. Yet they don’t seem to have engaged in any of the critical cultural studies kinds of questions regarding whose interests are being served now by their efforts, and what the reason is for

! 33! continuing this line of work that is, in my opinion, now exhausted. Financial security is of course one obvious reason. It is very difficult to make a living as an art photographer, and only a select few reach the levels of success that Becker and Burtynsky enjoy. On

Burtynsky’s website interested viewers are directed to purchase his prints from the eleven galleries in ten international cities that house his work. He also lists eleven of his published hard-cover books, offering the name of the publisher, ISBN and shipping weights for those that wish to purchase them. Becker’s website offers less commercial options, with only one mention of the option to order a signed copy of one of his four books. The price is seventy-five Euros (one-hundred and ten Canadian dollars). I found no information on the price for gallery prints for either of them.

However, in just the past five years, Becker’s photographs have been exhibited in solo and group shows in Sweden, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, USA, Istanbul,

Belgium, Switzerland, France, Austria and Korea. His photographs of Greenland have also been included in large scale museum-curated exhibitions including Seeing Glacial

Time: Climate Change in the Arctic at Tufts University Art Gallery, Boston from in 2014;

Alpine and Polar Landscapes in Art 1775–2012 at the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham,

Washington in 2014; The Altered Landscape: Photographs of a Changing Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno Nevada in 2012; True North: Contemporary Art of the

Circumpolar North at the Anchorage Museum in Alaska in 2012; and the Wilhelm-Hack-

Museum in Ludwigshafen, Germany in 2011. His photographs are clearly in high demand, and he is represented by four international galleries according to his website.

Notably, it is his sublime and mysterious iceberg and glacier photographs that are usually chosen and featured in curated projects. I haven’t encountered the photograph of the dead

! 34! sled dog or the oil drums in any group exhibitions, and they’re not on his website. They only appear in his own monograph Broken Line.

It is important to note here that Olaf Otto Becker has created a number of photographs that differ from those included in his monograph Broken Line. In another of his artist monograph’s, this one titled Above Zero (2009 Hatje Cantz), Becker offers photographs of the inland ice and melt-water rivers of Greenland. There is an entire section in this book that features photographs of the Swiss research camp that he stayed in during his photographic excursions. It shows beautifully documented settings where equipment is stacked up and snowmobiles are parked or white washed landscapes wherein the scientists are setting up measuring stations anchored deep into the ice.

However, outside of the published monograph, I have only rarely found these photographs included in exhibitions. Perhaps this is Becker’s choice, or it may be a decision made by gallery owners or curatorial staff. If so, the curatorial impetus to present a narrowly constructed story of the Arctic, and Greenland, is highlighted.

1.4 Ties to Historical Notions of the ‘North’

Literary descriptions of Arctic places come to us from medieval, enlightenment and modern cultures. Notions of mythic and extreme Arctic lands that are found in contemporary photography seem to echo ancient and medieval perceptions. The ancient

Greeks pondered what Greenland must have been like; it was thought to exist in an unreachable place beyond Boreas (the North Wind), thus they called the people there

‘Hyperborean’6. Viking stories of Greenland date back to the time of the Scandinavian

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 6 Greek geographer Pytheas is said to have travelled North of Thule, Greenland around 330 BC. (McGhee 22-24)

! 35! outmigration in the 9th and 10th Centuries AD (Oslund 11; McGhee 88). After leaving their own country and the tyranny of a Norwegian king, the Icelandic Sagas tell us that

Vikings settled the islands of the North Atlantic first and later made a colony in

Greenland (Ibid). It was Erikur “the red”, having been expelled from Iceland, who is said to have first settled in Greenland and his son, Leifur Eriksson, who sailed on from

Greenland to L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada. Indeed, included in the

Icelandic Sagas, Greenland was described as a place of exile where men were tested; to them it was thought of as “a peripheral space in the Norse world” (Grove 30). Through the Sagas we learn that Icelanders too saw Greenland as the outermost limits of their own world. And in defining themselves against these limits they helped to create an early and lasting image of a far-flung, wild and extreme place full of danger as well as riches of walrus tusk, walrus hide rope, and Arctic furs (Grove 40). The riches we seek today have changed, but our notion of Greenland as a marginally inhabitable, otherworldly place has weathered the ages.

Well-known European and North American paintings and photographs of

Greenland date back to the days of polar exploration. Centuries after the Norse re- settlement period, a variety of exploratory expeditions are known to have searched for a

North East passage to Asia, the North West passage and the North Pole (McGhee 130)7.

English, Danish and Dutch expeditions made attempts, some unsuccessfully, to various parts of the Arctic in the 1500s and a whole host of nations took part in failed and successful polar expeditions to a variety of regions including Greenland, Russia, Svalbard

(Norway) and Canada from the 1600s through to the 1900s. During this time, new routes

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 7 A compilation of Arctic expedition attempts is found in “Early Photographers of the Canadian Arctic and Greenland” by Wamsley and Barr.

! 36! were mapped, lost Norse settlements were searched for, goods of various kinds were traded back and forth, stories were reported and dreamt, moralities tested, ships lost, and even a balloon journey started and failed by Mr. S.S. Andrée8. Many men died, some returned home, national prides were challenged and championed9 and images were made—of both real and imagined far away places. Robert McGhee writes:

The term “Arctic explorer” conjures the dramatic image of a heavily bearded,

frostbitten figure pushing through an endless blizzard, surviving on pemmican,

willpower and the quest for knowledge of for fame. This specific image comes

from Victorian travel literature, a genre that was invented or perfected by

travellers such as Charles Francis Hall, an explorer in the classic mode who

presented himself as the hero of some outstandingly well-narrated adventures.

(130)

Thus, adding to the ancient and medieval tales of Greenland and the Arctic came grand travelogues, poems, hero’s diaries, sublime paintings, and eventually spectacular photographs that were published for keen audiences in Europe and America. Northern polar landscapes were depicted as distant, nearly vacant, frozen, and sublime by British and North American travellers, yet sometimes as friendly and familiar by Nordic ones.

Just like the vaguely named North American ‘West’10 (which is actually a varied and international place made up of differing localities and histories) was crafted through tales !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8 For an account of Salomon Andée’s ill-fated balloon journey see “The Resolute Explorer” by Tøjner. 9 For an account of the art of Arctic exploration see Arctic Spectacles: The Frozen North in Visual Culture, 1818-1875 by Potter. 10 Page Stegner explains that “[t]he make believe West was brought to us first by railroad pamphleteers, and by writers like Owen Wister and Zane Gray, artists like Remington, Russell, and N.C. Wyeth, entertainers like Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley (2).

! 37! of heroic figures and iconic art, the idea of the ‘frozen Arctic’ or “great white North’ is too. Through history it has been imagined as a grand and imaginary place where both dreams and nightmares await. It has been brought to us from travel literature from explorers, writers and scientists who in the nineteenth century play an important role in the shaping of future literary and visual culture of an ‘imaginary Arctic’ (or perhaps

‘Arctics’).

In Knut Ljøgodt’s essay “In Quest of the Sublime: Peder Balke and the Romantic

Discovery of the North”, we learn that authors Charlotte Brontë and Mary Shelley both conjure images of frozen, Northern vistas in their novels. They were presumably inspired from travel writing of the time since neither of them had ever been to the Arctic Circle.

For example, in Jane Eyre (1847) Ljøgodt quotes passages where Brontë tells of the bleak northern shores of Arctic regions including Greenland; she refers to them as “that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole, and concentrate the multiplied rigours of extreme cold” (43). And in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), as

Ljøgodt also notes, we first meet Dr. Frankenstein’s monster against a backdrop of “vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed to have no end” (44). Later on, the monster symbolically disappears, never to be seen again, into an Arctic vista. Clearly the North is imagined here as a severe place where only monsters can survive, and where they go to hide away.

In fact, it was Mary Shelley’s mother Mary Wollstonecraft who had travelled to the Arctic and later published her Letters Written During a Short Residency in Sweden,

Norway, and Denmark in 1796. Author Anka Ryall discusses Wollstonecraft’s publication and the “tension between a real and imaginary North” that emerges (121).

! 38! Ryall describes Wollstonecraft as typical of writers of the time with regard to her tendency to cling to the notion of a dead and wintery North (124). Despite travelling in the springtime, Wollstonecraft offers stereotypical, sublime descriptions of a vague and undifferentiated North, while at the same time noting everyday details that provide a contradictory sense of mild weather and specifics about her environment (Ibid). Ryall thus further explains, “[r]epresentations of the North and northern landscapes in travel literature have traditionally been overdetermined by images of cold, bareness, desolation and remoteness” (122). Wollstonecraft arrived in midsummer in 1795, and although she expected to see snow capped mountains, she saw none (Ibid). Ryall suggests that

Wollstonecraft’s personal observations undermine her insistence on a “generic North defined by a cold climate” (125).

In painting, artists such as Françoise Auguste Biard (1798-1882) created Attack of the Polar Bears (~1839)—most likely before he joined a polar expedition in 1839 (see figure 12.) (Ljøgodt 50). The painting is described as reflecting “prevailing fantastical ideas about the wild north” as three men are depicted trying to escape the grips of attacking polar bears at sea (Ibid). Edwin Landseer’s painting titled Man Proposes, God

Disposes (1864) similarly takes part in portraying ideas of a fantastical Arctic inspired, it is said, by the fatal expedition of John Franklin (1786-1847 England) (Ljøgodt 51). In this painting two polar bears are depicted in an imagined scene where a ship lies broken to pieces and crushed by ice. The polar bears, with teeth bared, rip apart the ships remains thus presenting the Arctic as a deadly and wild place. And, for another example, Frederic

Edwin Church’s (1826-1900, USA) famous work The Icebergs (1861) shows a scene of jagged icebergs amidst a dark sky with ship wreckage strewn over the ice (see fig. 12.).

! 39!

Fig. 12. Frederic Edwin Church, The Icebergs (1861). Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Arctic. Esbjerg: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2013. 22. Print.

A terrifying, foggy, sublime background surrounds the ship’s remnants, yet Director and curator of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, Poul Erik Tøjner explains, that The Icebergs did not originally depict wreckage. It was only added for a London exhibition memorializing the lost Franklin ship; debris was painted in to satisfy the

British public’s current fascination will the lost ship (Tøjner 23-24). Writing about Arctic art and the British imagination, Adam Gopnik explains that the nineteenth century explorers “made a stylized image, both comic and courageous, of their time—a kind of polar refraction of its own, casting their own image upon the icebergs” (69). Danish-

Greenlandic Professor Minik Rosing offers an interesting point of comparison; he smartly reminds us that Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians undertook polar exploration for sometimes-different reasons (12). Anglo-Saxon representations of the Arctic in nineteenth century painting include Burkean-sublime scenes of shipwrecks, frozen landscapes and polar bear attacks. Yet some Scandinavian painters instead created a nationalistic depiction of Arctic journeys that explored themes from folklore and their appreciation of nature (Ibid).

! 40! Before highlighting a few examples, I will note that very few English language sources on Nordic landscape painting, that I could source, include Arctic scenes. Nordic

Landscape Painting in the Nineteenth Century by Torsten Gunnarsson and translated by

Nancy Adler was written “to offer non-Nordic readers a manageable overview of developments within the main thematic currents in the Nordic landscape art of the time

(vii).” The book acknowledges that the countries of Finland, Denmark, Sweden and

Norway are not homogenous in their interests and developments in painting. It explores paintings from the Danish Golden Age as well as the Classical, Wilderness, Realist and

Evocative landscape traditions, and no icebergs or Arctic landscapes are included. Neither are they found in A Mirror of Nature: Nordic Landscape Painting 1840-1920 published by Statens Museum for Kunst 2006– a joint exhibition and catalogue between five museums11. In this volume, the Nordic sublime is described as becoming fashionable in the eighteenth century just as the sublime became a newly established category in art

(Statens Museum for Kunst 15-16). Norwegian painter Peder Balke’s The Jostedal

Glacier (1840s) which is set in Europe, is offered as an example of this style and no paintings of icebergs or Arctic landscapes are included (Ibid). The exhibition catalogue

Arctic is the English language source that contains an example of Carl Rasmussen’s non- sublime representation of Greenland to be discussed shortly (Rosing 12).

While British and North American expeditioners generally sailed in search of high adventure, public fame and wealth, Rosing explains that some Nordic sailors explored the coastlines of the North Atlantic as an extension of their own homelands (12).

They sailed in search of lost communities, those early settlers from the tenth century who !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 11 Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki; National Museum, Stockholm; The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo; The Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis; and Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.

! 41! had lost contact with the mainland. They also sailed, along with French and Dutch expeditions, towards a North Eastern passage that took them not towards Greenland but rather to the Barents Sea and around the Islands of Svalbard, Norway. A painting like

Gustav Holm’s Umiak Expedition to Ammassalik12 1883-85, 1891 by Carl Rasmussen

(1831-1903) instead of polar bears and deadly adventure, shows women and children kayaking along a quiet shore (see fig. 13.). Rosing explains:

In Scandinavian expedition art, we generally find national-romantic subjects

with a folkloric tinge or sober illustrations of isolated natural phenomena, such as

northern lights, glacial caves or geologic structures. A painting from Gustav

Holme’s 1883-85 boat expedition to Ammassalik shows a delicate, thin-skinned

umiak sailing through tightly packed ice without a hint of drama. The sun casts a

mild light on the scene, the Danish flag flutters and the female rowers are lovely

and cheerful. We are on the domestic front here and the world is a friendly place.

(12)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 12 Ammassalik is an island in the Sermersooq municipality in Southeast Greenland.

! 42! Fig. 13. Carl Rasmussen, Gustav Holm’s Umiak Expedition to Ammassalik 1883-85, 1891. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Arctic. Esbjerg: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2013. 12. Print.

Similarly, Norwegian Peder Balke’s Vardøhus Fortress (1870s) depicts a group of men afloat in calm blue waters near the Fortress while icebergs frame the horizon against a peaceful sky (see fig. 14.). No discussion of this particular painting is provided in the exhibition catalogue, however it is clear to see that the motif is far from the sublime and otherworldly. Rather, it is a fine day out on the water near the northernmost Fortress in

Norway that these sailors are experiencing. Although these are the only two examples that

I could locate, in English language sources, to illustrate Professor Rosing’s point, a striking contrast between representations of polar expeditions by different nations is apparent.

Fig. 14. Peder Balke, Vardøhus Fortress, 1870s. Riopelle, Christopher; Knut Ljøgodt and Marit Ingeborg Lange. Paintings by Peder Balke. London: National Gallery London, 2014. Print.

! 43! These examples highlight the fact that representations of the Arctic are, as we should expect them to be, subjective interpretations that are tied to cultural values and perceptions. Around the year nineteen hundred, as Danish curators Poul Reik Tøjner and

Mathias Ussing Seeberg explain, the fascination with Arctic travel abated as British and

North American adventurers and nations set course for new and exciting uncharted territories to explore (7). But during this time of intense exploration, the Arctic became

“an image machine” and lasting Anglo-Saxon impressions of extreme hardship and heroic survival were made (Tøjner 20).

Therefore, it is my argument that this terrific, sublime motif, so prominent in ancient lore as well as English language literary and art history, has become a kind of an artistic touchstone for contemporary photographic artists. The legends of foreign, ancient, medieval and now contemporary interlopers in Greenland have produced a dominant and restrictive motif. If, as Roland Barthes suggests, the purpose of myth is to empty reality and replace it with a natural justification for the innocent things it has left, then the motif of the sublime Arctic has effectively emptied Greenland of alternative realities (Barthes

142-43). They key is that without a powerful counter-motif(s), the myth of the Arctic sublime has dominated the imaginations of a British and North American audience, and still does.

The race to discover and sail the waters around the North Pole finally ended when in 1903-1906 Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen successfully sailed through the entire

North West passage. But scenes of the three-hundred-year challenge have been forged in our minds; sublime motifs linger in our collective imaginations. Tøjner sums this up by saying, “ [i]magination and representation blend together in the great myth of the Arctic”

(18). The myths are perhaps reflected or re-awakened through Becker’s photographs of

! 44! Greenland from 2006-2012. His is a legitimate aesthetically based approach to art making, perhaps an homage to early masters—for an audience familiar with the history of painting, British culture or polar exploration of the 1800s. If familiar, an audience would recognize that art from this, and every age, tells us something about ourselves and our societal values and points of view. And that the sublime depictions of danger, beauty and adventure from the 1800s reflect subjective experiences of Arctic exploration filtered through individual egos as well as national values of the period. But if not, while these re- made sublime art images project an out-of-date notion of space and place—a limited and limiting motif left over from another age—an everyday audience may mistake a ‘story’ of an idea of place for the place itself. Tøjner again explains that “once a certain idea of landscape, a myth, a vision, establishes itself in an actual place, it has a peculiar way of muddling categories, of making metaphors more real than their reference; of becoming, in fact, part of the scenery” (19).

In terms of a photographic history of the Arctic sublime, William Bradford’s

(1823-1892, USA) prints, from his 1869 expedition, were among the first landscape photographs of Greenland ever seen by American and British viewers. So difficult were the conditions that many Arctic expeditions that attempted to gather photographs either failed in their attempts to do so, or their ships and lives were lost (Wamsley and Barr 36-

45). A number of other Arctic photographers made landscape scenes there including Dr.

Hayes (1832-1881 USA) who while on his polar expedition of 1860, created eighty-two images that include “views of the ship, topographic features, native Greenlanders and

Greenlandic settlements” (Wamsley and Barr 41).

Sir Allen Young’s (1827-1915 UK) Greenlandic expedition photographer George

R. de Wilde (N.d.) published a collection of twelve good photographs in 1876 in Cruise

! 45! of the ‘Pandora’, though they are described as more modest than those from Bradford’s expedition. William Grant (1851-1935 UK) is identified as another successful Arctic photographer in the 1870s serving on the Pandora during Young’s second expedition and photographing in Sisimiut, and Qeqertarsuaq (Wamsley and Barr 44). There have also been “exquisite” images of “the variegated coasts of Greenland” by a Nordic photographer named Thomas Neergaard Krabbe (1861-1936 Denmark) (Walker Art

Centre 36). In terms of aesthetic representation these photographs of course did not depict dramatic polar bear attacks like some paintings did. However they did feature frozen landscapes, ships caught in pack-ice, immense icebergs and in the case of Bradford’s team, dead animals after “a day’s sport killing six polar bears” (Lapides 119). For

Bradford’s team, the ice and icebergs were both sublime in the awe-inspiring way and also the terrifying and dangerous way. They were thought of as beautiful and dangerous, and their photographs with captions, instead of titles, depict both sentiments. For example, this beautiful iceberg is pictured from afar, its irregular shape accentuated against a cloudy sky (see fig. 15.). To a British and American audience who would never travel this far North, to think of a fresh water lake in the middle of an island of ice must have been so very exotic and thrilling.

! 46! !

Fig. 15. William Bradford, This view shows the beautiful forms in varied shapes which the berg assumed. On this berg we found a lake of fresh water, covering an acre in extent. 1869. Lapides, Michael. Ed. The Arctic Regions: Illustrated with Photographs Taken on an Art Expedition to Greenland by William Bradford with a Descriptive Narrative by the Artist. Boston: David R. Godine Publisher in association with the New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2013. Print.

By contrast, this next photograph depicts a swath of threatening ice. It is pictured up close and surrounding the ship, as if on purpose, and causing much anxiety and panic (see fig.

16.). The ice is pictured jagged and rough, and piled as high as the ship in the distance, seeming to overtake it visually, if not actually.

! 47!

Fig. 16. William Bradford, Here we were surrounded by the wildest scene possible to conceive. The largest icebergs and heavy hummock ice seemed as of they enticed us amongst them to destroy us. While fast to one of the icebergs a large mass fell off, only two hundred feet from our stern, causing such a commotion in the water that our vessel rubbed her sides against the iceberg in a very dangerous manner. We cast off and steamed to what we thought a more safe berg, and experienced while there a heavy snowstorm. 1869. Lapides, Michael. Ed. The Arctic Regions: Illustrated with Photographs Taken on an Art Expedition to Greenland by William Bradford with a Descriptive Narrative by the Artist. Boston: David R. Godine Publisher in association with the New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2013. Print.

Bradford’s photographs will be discussed further shortly, during an examination of

Camille Seaman’s work. At his point, they serve to illustrate the fact that Bradford’s well- known photographs also portray the Arctic as a beautiful yet ice-filled and dangerous space. Both notions of sublime are at work here, and as with polar exploration paintings of the time, through art history they contribute to our general sense of the Arctic as an otherworldly and sublime place.

To return to Becker’s work, and keeping these historic notions of Arctic places in

! 48! mind, it is clear that his photographs continue the tradition of picturing the North as a frozen and sublime space. The authors of the introductory and closing essays in Broken

Line make a point of highlighting the dangers of Becker’s remote and “anachronistic” journey in a wild and untouched place (Ibid). While some of his photographs may have been made in more remote places along the coast, his initial images of the icefjord were actually not. Yet, the illusion of vacant and frozen beauty -on the periphery of the world- is presented. This is achieved simply by careful framing of the landscape pictures so that no signs of people are present. Counting on the fact that few people have gone, or will go to Ilulissat, Becker is able to suspend disbelief and convince people of an imaginary place where time seems to stand still. Having recently been to some of the very places that

Becker photographed in Greenland, I can confirm that he would have been able to make his pictures of the Ilulissat Icefjord (that begin his book,) from the shores, or very near to them, of the town of Ilulissat itself.

I took a shuttle to the edge of town and took a one-hour walk on a well-marked trail in order to see the famous icefjord13. Upon reviewing Becker’s photographs, it became clear to me that he had to have walked the same trail that I was on, and that his photographs of the Ilulissat Icefjord would have been made very near to the town itself.

The icefjord wall (glacier front) ends near to where the town begins, and it is only a short ten-minute boat trip around the corner of the bay to reach the icefjord; it is a busy bay with fisherman, tour boats and water taxis travelling constantly amidst the grounded icebergs. It is possible to get near to them, with much less danger of them turning over, because they are grounded along an “iceberg bank” (a deposit of gravel and stone) that

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 13 The Ilulissat Icefjord was named a UNESCO World heritage site in 2004 because of its “outstanding glaciology and natural beauty” (Ilulissat Icefjord Office 4).

! 49! exists along the ocean floor there beside the town site (Ilulissat Icefjord Office 10-11).

Ilulissat is a town of about 5000 people and it is Greenland’s third largest city behind Nuuk, the capital and Sisimiut, which is the second largest (Ibid). Although it is indeed far from any major financial centers in the world, it is still a developed and prospering town within the Arctic Circle and a popular tourist destination. The hike I took was the “World Heritage Trail: Old Heliport-Sermermiut” in Ilulissat that begins at the edge of town, goes beyond the old town power plant and then meanders alongside the

Icefjord for 1.3 km each way. Looking at Becker’s photograph titled Ilulissat Icefjord 4

(see fig. 17.), I realized that had he must have walked along the same trail, although I had no GPS equipment with me to confirm it.

Fig. 17. Olaf Otto Becker, Ilulissat Icefjord 4, Part 2, 07/2003, 69°12’74’’ N, 51°07’88’’ W. Olaf Otto Becker. N.d. N.p. Web. 10, April, 2015. .

There is only one Ilulissat Icefjord, and there is only one shoreline that it may be approached from in proximity to Ilulissat, therefore we must have been walking in approximately the same location. Looking at the photographs below, it is easy to see that

! 50! we were near to the same place where the icefjord comes to an end and where open water filled with ice bergs begins. The following photograph (see fig. 18.) is one that I took of the Ilulissat icefjord from the shore, it looks much like the one by Becker shown above.

Fig. 18. Kristine Thoreson, Ilulissat Icefjord from Hiking Trail, 2014. Collection of the artist.

Had Becker simply turned the camera around (as I did in 2014) to show what was behind him on the path, the following image (see fig. 19.) is approximately what he would have seen (as I did):

Fig. 19. Kristine Thoreson, Ilulissat City from Hiking Trail, 2014. Collection of the artist.

! 51!

My photograph of the city of Ilulissat (above) was taken not more than fifty meters from where I took the Icefjord photograph. In a town that is famous for its proximity to the ice, it is plain to see once there that Becker’s Icefjord photograph could have been made from anywhere along the well-travelled hiking trail, anywhere along the water’s edge in town, or anywhere within the bay beside the town which is easily accessed by tour boats, water taxis, cruise ships and fishing boats. Far from being the vacant and dilapidated place that

Becker pictures, the images at the start of his catalogue are actually located right next to urban spaces. There is no indication in his monograph, in the photographs, the photograph’s titles or the essays included, regarding his initial proximity to an urban space. The monograph is misleading, not in what it pictures, but in what it doesn’t picture. While his location up the coast of Greenland surely became more and more remote, and dangerous, the farther away from Ilulissat he travelled, his collection of photographs still present a tangential view of Greenland. For me, the myth of the vacant and otherworldly North perpetuated by Becker (and others) was immediately dispelled the moment I arrived in town.

Thus, Olaf Otto Becker can be seen as re-performing an ancient voyage. He casts himself out of daily, urban life and into a solo and “anachronistic” voyage (Ibid). He presents a monograph of photographs that highlights the small villages, the ‘empty’ landscapes and icy vistas. He avoids talking about how easy it is to get to Greenland and

Ilulissat, his starting point. And neither he nor the essayists included in the book mention the thriving urban populations in Greenland, the growing mining or fishing industries nor the vibrant tourism industry. (These industries will be discussed with further detail in chapter two.) His is a project that deliberately re-creates Greenland as a peripheral space

! 52! where rugged men journey and toil to reach sublime lands. His is a personal and subjectively created story, which any art project may be. However due to the truth value implied with documentary art photography, the use of GPS coordinates to mark his geographical location, and essays to discuss the pressing issues of climate change, this subjective interpretation of space creates a particular expectation of place. This expectation is not all together false, but it is not a balanced presentation either. It is a colonialist account, akin perhaps to Victorian popular press reports, that fails to acknowledge local notions of place and instead presents Greenland through the eyes of a specific (and not contemporary) Western and Southern interloper. Furthermore, it continues to uphold the image of the Arctic as a space of male, rugged individualism wherein one may journey as a test of will or in a show of extreme, macho dedication and talent. As Doreen Massey has suggested, what is required in contemporary cultural studies is only a progressive notion of place that is useful for these times and not reactionary (319). Indeed, Becker’s interpretation does not provide a progressive notion of place in the slightest.

1.5 Camille Seaman

For Camille Seaman, the understanding that we are all part of one finite planet— each of us both made from it and retuning back to it—is one of the things that compel her to return over and over again to make her photographs of the Arctic and Antarctic (75).

She is a graduate of the University of New York at Purchase (photography) and has taken master classes in photography with well-known photographers such as Steve McCurry

(National Geographic) Sebastiao Salgado and Paul Fusco. She thinks of her landscape photographs as portraits of unique, valuable and individual components that make up one

! 53! whole, one that she has been tasked to try to protect (Seaman 98). For over ten years

Seaman has travelled to Arctic and Antarctic regions as a staff photographer. Working for various tourist expedition ships from 2003 through 2011, she has witnessed a steady decrease in the ice; to try to raise awareness about the issue she felt compelled to publish a photographic monograph titled Melting Away in 2015. She considers herself a portrait photographer and approaches each iceberg, polar bear, or landscape just as she would a person (Ibid). Her images, like Becker’s, present scenes of Greenland and other Arctic regions as beautiful, otherworldly and often sublime. Like McGhee’s description of the

Arctic as the “last imaginary place” Seaman’s photographs illustrate a place that is distant and fantastic, unique, unattainable and compellingly attractive (see fig. 20, fig. 21) (Ibid).

! Fig. 20. Camille Seaman, Iceberg with Seal Blood – Qassiarsuq, Greenland, September 2009. Camille Seaman Portfolios. Camille Seaman. N.d. Web. 10, May, 2015. .

! 54! ! Fig. 21. Camille Seaman, Grand Pinnacle Iceberg Detail, East Greenland, August 23, 2006. Seaman, Camille. Melting Away. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2015. Print.

Melting Away is her second published monograph; her first was released in 2008.

It was published by Photolucida, a nonprofit art group in Portland USA, and it was titled

The Last Iceberg but is now out of print. Seaman has built a reputation around her iceberg and polar photography and has a long record of publications and awards. According to one gallery that carries her work, Seaman’s limited edition prints start at a price of $1000

US (fifteen inches by twenty-three inches). Depending on how many are left for sale in each edition, they can reach up to $7500 for her large size ultrachrome prints (thirty-two inches by forty-eight inches) (Soul Catcher Studio). Her work can be considered both art photography and photojournalistic in style, and it appears in both magazine and gallery formats. Her photographs have been featured in gallery exhibitions across USA and

Canada as well as Luxembourg, UK, Denmark and France and in a solo exhibition titled

The Last Iceberg, at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC during 2007-08.

! 55! According to an American gallery that she is represented by, Seaman has been awarded many prizes including American Photo Magazine (top 15 emerging photographers, 2007);

Artist in Residence onboard M/V Orlova in Antarctica (2007); Critical Mass Top

Monograph Book Award (2006); National Geographic Award (2006); and Nikon.Net

Editor's Choice Award (2006) (Soul Catcher Studio). And on her TED personal profile page, she is listed as a Senior Fellow14 (2013) and a Stanford Knight Fellow (2013-14) and has published work in National Geographic Magazine, Italian Geo, The New York

Times Sunday Magazine, Newsweek, Outside, Zeit Wissen, Men’s Journal, Camera Arts,

Issues, PDN, and American Photo.

Camille Seaman can be seen to be working within a tradition of expedition artists who bring back photographs of rarely seen (by Western eyes) parts of the world. In her book Melting Away Seaman describes meeting a curator who was amazed by her iceberg photographs. In 2007 she attended a portfolio review in Santa Fe, New Mexico. When one reviewer came across her iceberg photographs she asked if Seaman had more of them and advised her to put a portfolio of just icebergs together. She did just that and entered the portfolio into a competition where she won first place. Her images were then sent out to two hundred and fifty industry professionals, and that’s when she states “my phone began to ring” (Seaman 116). From that point in 2007, Seaman was invited to show her work and began to be represented by galleries. She did her first TED talk in 2011, an event that “launched [her] onto a global stage” (Seaman 117). Her dedication to spending time in the Arctic (and Antarctic) regions allowed her to put together an impressive

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 14 TED is a nonprofit organization that is devoted to spreading ideas through short conference talks around the world.

! 56! portfolio of photographs from places that many modern audiences have never travelled to or—at that time—even seen images of.

Let us consider, before examining the implications of Seaman’s internationally recognized work on notions of place in the Arctic, a little more of the history of

Greenland as a location and as an idea. Greenland has been thought of not only as a space for exile but also as a place of futuristic and bizarre dreams through history. Up until the late nineteenth century many different notions of what might lie at the northernmost part of the world were entertained. What seem now ridiculous ideas were potential realities before explorers actually reached the North Pole and could report back about what they found. Before then, people wondered if the Arctic Ocean was an open sea at the ‘top’ of the world, or if there was a new continent with a yet unknown civilization living there.

Some even thought that the center of the northern ice cap might be a fertile oasis, or perhaps just a gigantic hole in the ocean that led into the core of the earth (Tøjner 17-18).

In these early days, peripheral and sometimes imaginary in nature, Greenland is framed as the actual and mythical frontier to whatever lies at the North Pole. Expedition photographs from the 1800s finally helped people to understand, alongside the scientific and geographical information gathered, what did lie above the Arctic Circle. And, as I’ve described earlier, although voyagers and the public back home eventually came to realize that there was neither an oasis nor a hole to the center of the earth, they still clung to notions of an imagined North. This love of an Arctic myth in Europe is said by Loomis to be tied to England’s love of their own hero-explorers. So brave and dedicated were the men of Arctic exploration that sailed with determination to find the Northwest passage, and later to search for the lost Franklin Expedition, that they became symbols of national pride and prestige (Loomis 95-96). To let go of a fascination with Arctic exploration and

! 57! mystery was to lose prestige and their heroic figures, and so imagined ideas of the North prevailed over newfound facts and maps that charted the Arctic of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Seaman, and Becker began photographing Arctic regions around the same time—

1999 through 2003—and have since built up their own reputations and prestige through their dedication to the ‘specialty’ regions that they have made careers photographing.

Carving out a niche area is a good way to make a living and the Arctic has been a niche for photographic artists before, in the eighteen hundreds. In 1869, American painter

William Bradford (1823-1892) along with professional photographers John L. Dunmore

(fl. 1860-75) and George P. Critcherson (1823-1892 USA) undertook a three-month long expedition to Greenland just for the purpose of making art (Potter 191). Sailing from St.

John’s Newfoundland, the expedition resulted in the publication of his book titled The

Arctic Regions: Illustrated with Photographs Taken on an Art Expedition to Greenland.

The primary purpose of this expedition was simply to make art, and in 1873 the published books featured 141 hand-printed, large-scale albumen prints (the first paper print produced from a negative). The photographs and eventual touring slide shows that followed were received with great enthusiasm in Britain. Due to the recent loss of the

Franklin expedition, the British public was more interested in Bradford, Dunmore and

Critcherson’s work than Americans were. Even Queen Victoria purchased a copy of the extensive, leather bound photographic book, which helped to solidify Bradford’s reputation as one of the major Arctic artist of the time. (Potter 197-198). And their photographs helped British and American audiences to see the wonders of the North, as if with their own eyes.

! 58! Bradford’s expedition photographs and paintings display the awe-inspiring and terrifying, sublime qualities of the Arctic as already discussed. The photographs he, along with Dunmore and Critcherson made, were also appreciated for their veracity; the president of Columbia College, Dr. Barnard praised the photographs for their

“educational purposes” and contribution to the obtainment of accurate and knowledge of

“Northern Regions” (Potter 196). Potter explains that the New York Times published a review of the photographs stating that they “bring before the spectator, in a striking manner, the terrors of the ice-bound North, and enable him, better than a thousand pages of verbal description do, to understand the topography of this land of icebergs, glaciers, and vast frozen seas” (Ibid)15. Alas, Becker, Seaman and Itkonen (to be discussed next) have likewise all followed in the footsteps of these early expedition photographers and solidified their reputations, as well as public curiosity, through the publication of internationally available monograph books.

Although Seaman does not travel in order to learn what lies at the poles nor just to gain more success as an artist, her photographs of polar regions, like those taken long ago, have gathered a lot of media attention in recent years. They offer both sublime and detailed impressions of northern regions, and with titles that include specific place names and dates, they also carry connotations of accurate documentation. Recently her photographs have been featured in a video piece titled “Photographer Camille Seaman

Captures an Icy Landscape That’s Melting Away” for CBC The National; the CBC host

Duncan McCue describes her as an artist who has travelled to the “coldest, most distant places on earth”. With such an introduction McCue upholds the notion of an ever-frozen !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 15 Many other Arctic expeditions included artists and photographers among their men, I provided a few examples in the discussion of Becker’s work and Wamsley and Barr provide a detailed list of numerous attempts and success in Imaging the Arctic (36-45).

! 59! and peripheral place; even the CBC gets wrapped up in the love of myths of the North. If only they understood that it is no longer such an extreme place to travel to. As Minik

Rosing explains, “[t]he natural conditions of the Arctic no longer regulate access to it.” and “[a]nyone can go on a group tour to the North Pole, and a polar researcher with Coke- bottle glasses and a peacemaker has the same odds of succeeding as a grizzled ironman”

(12). So aptly this pair of opposing sentiments underline the different perceptions there are on the North. It is, to some, still a peripheral, unwelcoming and frozen place while to others it is a place that anyone on a group tour can go. Where do Seaman’s photographs fit in, and what do they tell us about the North?

Seaman’s position as staff photographer on various tourist cruise ships allowed her the opportunity to make her images over twelve years. Her most recent position (that ended in 2011) was upon the Hürtigruten—a Norwegian passenger, freight and vacation cruise line based out of Trømso, Norway. The majority of Hürtigruten’s business comes from its coastal route between Bergen, Norway and Kirkenes, Norway representing eighty-six percent of its operating revenues in 2013 (Hürtigruten). Its MS/Fram line offers year-round explorations to the Antarctic, Svalbard (Norway) and Greenland. In 2013 the

MS Fram reports 62,950 guest “cruise nights”, (which I understand to mean there were that many nights booked on board) which works out to seventy point five per cent of their capacity (Ibid). Indeed, many tourists and commuters travel amidst the northern waters daily, monthly and yearly. At present then, it is not such a fantastic thing to travel to the coldest places on earth, even if it was perhaps more the case back in 1999 when Seaman began her work. In today’s advanced Arctic travel market, neither is it just dedicated photographers like Seaman (or Becker) who can make photographs of Arctic ice and water, for access is getting easier and easier for the general population.

! 60! In addition to the Norwegian operator, there are many other tours that offer Arctic adventures such as the Canadian program, Students On Ice. They offer (expensive) education-based excursions for High School and University students from around the world one-week trips at the rate of over ten thousand dollars Canadian per participant.

There are other private Arctic adventure companies as well such as Adventure Canada,

Polar Cruises, National Geographic Expeditions, The Polar Experts, Travel Wild,

Adventures Abroad, Greenland Tours, Touring Greenland, Peregrine Adventures and more. Basically, if you have between $3000 CAD and $10000+ CAD to spend you can find a tour to the Arctic that suits your interests. Companies such as Iceland Photo Tours markets Greenlandic photography expeditions specifically, offering a twelve-day tour of both Iceland and Greenland or to East Greenland for ten days each accompanied by a professional outdoor photographer. Therefore it is clear that there are a plethora of tour operators and opportunities to travel to the Arctic. There are many photo-taking tourists in addition to art photographers who now visit the Arctic each year, albeit for a hefty price.

But, to what end?

The main point here is that yes, amazing photographs have been made of the less- travelled Arctic regions including Greenland. But the question is how shall we look at them if not just through the lens of a historically based mythic North photographed by a prestigious and brave artist? As I stated earlier, this particular way of framing and understanding Arctic photographs presents a motif, a subject and a position that I feel is now exhausted, despite the fact that it is offered in an attempt to raise awareness about important climate issues. In fact, it seems Becker and Seaman agree, as they have gone on to pursue new topics of interest. Becker is now photographing jungle and forest landscapes and has published a new monograph titled Reading the Landscape, also

! 61! published by Hatje Cantz in 2015. Seaman finished photographing polar landscapes and ice in 2011, feeling that it was too disheartening to return any longer and to witness the loss of ice (Seaman 20). She has begun to shoot and exhibit photographs of storm cells and cloudy skies, with continued success. Yet there is this legacy of dramatic, sublime and otherworldly iceberg photography left to appreciate, evaluate and to reflect upon.

The problem here is that there is a tendency—in all landscape photography—for the image to overwhelm the place (Lippard 180). In promoting a love or admiration for the beautiful places of the North, the particulars of place and people are often glossed over and what is pictured is an undifferentiated space. Icebergs, ice floes, glaciers, rocky shorelines, polar bears and snow-covered landscapes from Norway, Finland, Greenland,

Russia, Antarctica, Iceland and so on can easily be confused. Like with Becker’s work, the myth of the frozen and peripheral North, marginally uninhabitable and full of beautiful danger, easily emerges in Seaman’s photographs. Photographs of her cruise ships and their occupants, either onboard or travelling by zodiac on an excursion, appear alongside scenes of ice, and polar animals. Indeed, the few people ever pictured are tourists. With four million “Far Northern” inhabitants, and of those over four hundred thousand indigenous inhabitants, surely there is a local, human presence to consider here

(Brigham 370)?

Furthermore, in Seaman’s book Melting Away, photographs of Svalbard, Norway, the Antarctic, West Greenland, South Greenland, East Greenland and the Canadian Arctic are presented at random, thankfully most often with titles or captions that reveal where they were made. The key differences that can hint at location are few; the appearance of polar bears (most often encountered in Svalbard, Norway, the Canadian Arctic or parts of

Greenland), penguins (only encountered in the Antarctic), and Scandinavian-style

! 62! coloured wooden buildings (found in Svalbard, Finland, Norway, Greenland and Iceland).

Without the captions it is difficult to ‘place’ the photographs other than to say they are

‘Northern’ images, or ‘polar’ scenes. For example, Seaman’s photograph below (see fig.

22.) was taken in the Antarctic and Itkonen’s (see fig. 23.) in Greenland.

Fig. 22. Camille Seaman, Tabular Iceberg, Detail, Antarctic Sound. N.d. Camille Seaman Portfolios. Camille Seaman. N.d. Web. 10, May, 2015. .

Fig. 23. Tiina Itkonen, Iceberg Gallery 6. Tiina Itkonen. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, June, 2015. .

! 63! Without captions it would be impossible to determine the location in which they are located and therefore, these photographs exist as spectacular illustrations that refuse the viewer any kind of narrative other than that of sublime beauty. And, like Burtynsky’s and

Becker’s photographs, they offer no course of action to the viewer once the work of raising awareness and evoking compassion for these places is achieved.

North American postmodern criticisms of Modernist (that is traditional, aesthetically based) landscape photography rightly point out that landscape images can obscure important facts about the societies that live and work there. For example, Joel

Snyder explains that early landscape photographers such as Carleton Watkins (1829 –

1916, USA) successfully harmonized the landscape “with industrial progress” through compositionally pleasing images of railroad tracks (187-9). Watkins is now a well-known photographer who first merged “a remarkable and heretofore unmatched technical virtuosity with formulas derived from, but not coextensive with, the picturesque and sublime modes of landscape depiction” (Snyder 182). He is known to have used large twenty by twenty four inch negatives from which he was able to produce extremely detailed landscapes; his approach was emulated by serious photographers of the

American West, right up to, and including, Ansel Adams (Snyder 183). Snyder further points out that Watkins photographs, though celebrated, “neatly avoid questions about whose land it is that is being developed and judged by his photographs” thereby reinforcing the idea of a “western American Eden” (Ibid).

Snyder suggests that this kind of “contemplative” landscape aims for “the evacuation of verbal, narrative, or historic elements” and presents a pleasing image via a

“transparent eyeball, an “experience of presence” or an “innocent eye” (1). He goes on to state that these approaches are associated with modernism; they are characterized visually

! 64! by an emphasis on light, texture, shadow, form and harmonious compositions. This style of art photography fell under attack in the 1960s and 1970s with the emergence of postmodernism because of their lack of criticality. For example, the striking black and white mountain-scapes by Ansel Adams were (and still are) simultaneously celebrated for their artistic beauty and yet also criticized for being masculine and heroic representations with only aesthetic content. When another photographer criticized his nature photography, Adams remarked “I still believe there is real, social significance in a rock— a more important significance therein than in a line of unemployed” (Marien 273). As discussed earlier, the New Topographics photographers aimed to address these kinds of criticisms with their work. Still pleasing to look at, their works aimed to transcend the shallow “contemplative” view by engaging with locations and issues outside of the established territory of formal nature—rivers, mountains, desserts and so on (Ibid).

However it seems as though there is a double standard at work here. The beautiful representations of icebergs, inland ice and glaciers made by Becker and Seaman seem to belong both to this ‘contemplative’ and modernist category while also (to a lesser degree in my opinion) to the New Topographics tradition through their subject matter and emphasis on the loss of pristine places. Curiously, they are extremely popular and sought after in contemporary art because of their heroic and sublime appearances—the very characteristics that Ansel Adams was sometimes criticized for. He was, in fact, looking to garner appreciation for threatened places too. And was an important member of The

Sierra Club, a group that sought to conserve wilderness areas in USA (Marien 360). It seems that with the weight of the critically engaged New Topographics behind them that contemporary art photographers are more free to pursue aesthetically based images that allude to, rather than picture, environmental destruction. Yet, for all the awareness they

! 65! do bring about, the photographs of Seaman and Becker receive little critical scrutiny regarding the archaic notions of place that they celebrate. Nor does anyone note the fact that they eschew any references to the people of the Arctic. In fact, the people of the

Arctic are perhaps thought to not even exist since they are often absent from the landscapes of their own nations. Powerful themes of ‘timelessness’, ‘frozen purity’, and the ‘awe of glacial time’ have been successfully attached to the photographs made by

Becker and Seaman; these themes make them emotionally compelling and commercially successful. Of course I agree with Adams quoted statement and understand that there is a particular value and significance to picturing nature. Yet as I’ve argued earlier, taking a wider of view of a field of work can reveal lines of inquiry that shed light on unintended consequences of our actions. As noted earlier, Deborah Bright suggests that we should ask questions of landscape art that go beyond what has been included or excluded from the frame such as “why we still desire to make and consume” contemplative landscape imagery (Ibid)?

One idea is that outlying landscapes, as Rob Shields has argued, are an important part of how we (as urban people) define ourselves (3). To lose them is to lose what we define ourselves against, thus the myth of the frozen, pure, timeless North overpowers any other valuable avenues. Yet, in time, and as we grow more familiar with these sublime, ice-clad landscapes they will surely become tired motifs just as other ‘popular

‘landscape scenes of mountains, sunsets and beaches have. Another idea is that this love of an otherworldly North that we have today, although it is connected to our concern over climate change, it is also not unlike England’s love of their own Victorian hero-explorers.

Like voyages to the moon and submarine dives to the ocean floor, travel to distant places tends to stir the hearts of nations. Those talented enough and brave enough to dedicate

! 66! their lives to such work are worthy of admiration, respect and appreciation. They are the people who are looked up to as fearless and unique—men and women of the last imaginary places. They remind us of what we can accomplish if we dream, and so we uncritically celebrate and cherish what they do.

1.6 Tiina Itkonen

Originally from Finland, Itkonen has been photographing the people and landscapes of Greenland since the mid 1990s. She holds a Master of Arts from the

University of Art and Design in Helsinki, Finland and is a member of the internationally recognized and conceptual photography group called the ‘Helsinki School’ 16 . Her portraits of northern communities and panoramic landscapes feature long horizon lines, the low light of the Midnight Sun and Polar Darkness, colourful buildings dotted around a gigantic landscape and dog-sleds and hunters spread out over blankets of ice. Her monograph Avannaa was published in 2014 by Kehrer Verlag and features images taken between 2002 and 2010. Her work has appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions across Europe and North America, and has also been shown in select locations in

Australia and Korea in the past decade. Articles that mention or feature her photographs have appeared in Harper’s Magazine (2014), Greenland Today (2012), Journal of

Northern Studies (2011), Condé Nast Traveller (2009) and The Guardian (2008).

Like Becker’s and Seaman’s photographs, in Avannaa Itkonen offers stunning

“contemplative” vistas, to use Snyder’s term again. She shows us what Greenlandic landscapes look like at different times of year and evokes a sense of large open space

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 16 The Helsinki school is group of artists who are associated with the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Finland.

! 67! through her wide-angle views. Her photographs present balanced compositions, beautiful light, and calm skies (see fig. 24.).

Fig. 24. Tiina Itkonen Sermermiut 2, Ilulissat 2007. Tiina Itkonen. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, June, 2015. .

As with Becker’s photographs, an idyllic sense of place is constructed and any feelings of sublime that occur are based on an awe of beauty rather than terror or a feeling of insignificance. Included in this series is an even split between scenes of different villages and small towns including Ilulissat (see fig. 25.), scenes of sled dogs out on the ice with or without their Inuit handlers (See fig. 26), and icebergs and the Ilulissat Icefjord.

Fig. 25. Tiina Itkonen, Ilulissat 4, 2010. Itkonen, Tiina. Avannaa. Berlin: Kehrer Verlag, 2014. Print.

! 68!

Fig. 26. Tiina Itkonen, Ikerasak, 2009. Tiina Itkonen. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, June, 2015. .

Author Pirkko Siitari, in her essay “Frozen in Time” for Avannaa writes that “Itkonen’s immaculately lit Arctic landscapes exude an air of peace and supreme stillness—they appear frozen in time” (n.pag.) And in an interview with Leo Benedictus for

“Photography: My Best Shot” in the Guardian online, Itkonen explains her experience of photographing Qaanaaq (see fig. 27 below) in northern Greenland:

In every house in Qaanaaq in northern Greenland, there is a window overlooking

the sea. It is very important, because the sea is where the hunters come back from,

and you can see whales and seals. When it looks beautiful, I go out and take

photographs. This was taken in 2005, at the end of September, early one morning

between 6am and 7am. I had explored the landscape at dawn, at night in the

moonlight, when the snow was falling, and so on, waiting for days on end for the

right moment to shoot. Looking at this view for a long time had a very calming,

hypnotic effect.

! 69!

Fig. 27. Tiina Itkonen, Qaanaaq 4, 2005. Itkonen, Tiina. Avannaa. Berlin: Kehrer Verlag, 2014. Print.

Another example of praise for Itkonen’s landscape work comes from anthropologist Jean-

Michel Huctin who offers another closing essay titled “The Intimate Far North” in

Avannaa (n.pag.). Huctin suggests that Itkonen’s photographs show how she perceives the beauty and reality of Greenland in a “natural” way and that her photographs present

“a different perspective from today’s photojournalists by eschewing the ethnic clichés entrenched in our imagination due to the desire for exoticism typical among Western audiences” (n.pag.).

However Itkonen does not avoid cliché altogether, her collection of iceberg photographs that appear both in Avannaa and on her website www.tiinaitkonen.com offer the same kinds of sublime landscape motifs as do Becker’s and Seaman’s. An example of such an image is seen below (fig. 28.).

! 70!

Fig. 28. Tiina Itkonen, Iceberg 2, Kullorsuaq, 2006. Tiina Itkonen. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, June, 2015. .

She admits, in the above quoted paragraph, to waiting until the view is beautiful, and to waiting for hours to get the right moment. This does not seem to me to be a way to present the “natural” beauty of Greenland, rather a way to frame and stylize an image in the shape of Western conventions of landscape beauty.

Again, with these photographs questions about who owns, takes care of and occupies the regions of northern Greenland, or what local challenges or successes the communities encounter are avoided. What’s more is that her subjective views, like those of Becker and Seaman, have an air of authority to them because they are photographic.

Even though her landscapes reflect her own meditative experience of photographing, and her above quoted interview explains this, a publicly presented place-perception of a distant and mythical space is upheld. As Malcolm Andrews reminds us, landscape is a culturally constructed representational mode; land is first made into a landscape through a

! 71! particular “perceptual process” (3). He writes, “[t]he process might, therefore, be formulated as twofold: land into landscape; landscape into art” (Ibid).

Keeping this in mind them Huctin and Siitari’s evaluations seem to blindly accept these tracts of land and sea as objects of Western art. Andrews goes on to stress that landscape is a framed view and that it is “mediated land, land that has been aesthetically processed. It is land that has arranged itself, or has been arranged by the artistic vision, so that it is ready to sit for its portrait” (7). Under the mantle of environmental awareness and, a love of Greenlandic peoples and culture in Itkonen’s case, these three photographers all process the land and arrange it in very similar ways—maybe even clichéd (that is well-worn and tired-out) ways. To look at photographs taken from another perspective is to underline the similarity between the photographs discussed to this point.

In addition to being beautiful, strange, idyllic and sublime, Greenland can also be a difficult and dangerous one too—environmentally and socially. Photojournalist Ragnar

Axelsson gives his audience an opportunity to reflect on modern life—in its beauty and difficulties—in East Greenland. He is an Icelandic photographer who has worked in

Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Siberia and his work offers another perspective.

He has been published in The New York Times, Newsweek, Time and National

Geographic, and exhibited in a few galleries and museums across USA and Europe. And although this is an impressive list of accomplishments, it is important to stress that his work is not included in any of the internationally circulating exhibitions or books about the Arctic listed already. Becker, Seaman and Itkonen by contrast appear in many. For example, Becker and Seaman both appear in Seeing Glacial Time: Climate Change in the

Arctic, USA (listed earlier) and all three of them appear in the touring exhibition

Vanishing Ice: Alpine and Polar Landscapes in Art, 1775 – 2012 (also listed earlier).

! 72! Both Becker and Itkonen have recently shown work at the Anchorage Museum in Alaska and at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection as part of their curated exhibition schedule. This shows that although Axelsson is a very successful and much published photographer, art galleries and museums are not picking up his work as they are the others.

Axelsson’s monograph Last Days of the Arctic (2013) is for sale and available on amazon.com. A republished version of his 2004 Faces of the North is also now available, both published by the Icelandic publishing house Crymogea. At the back of Last Days of the Arctic he provides captions for each of his photographs that describe for the viewer what was occurring at the time he made them. Providing captions rather than titles is a photojournalistic practice that serves to provide a narrative account of the event(s) photographed. Titles in art exhibitions rather, are used most often to reference the artists intention and don’t necessarily relate to the event(s) pictured. Axelsson’s images are not just informational though, they too are beautiful to look at and may captivate an audience through dramatic lighting and up close points of view. The main argument here is that while Itkonen takes a conceptual approach by picturing a view of the sea and describing a meditative experience, Axelsson pictures the hunt out on the frozen ice. His chosen frames of Greenland are grittier and show the sometimes-gruesome (in my view) results of hunting expeditions. An idyllic life is hard to imagine when viewing the hard work, and sometimes-grim work, that people undertake while out hunting for food and skins

(see fig. 29. and fig. 30).

! 73!

Fig. 29. Ragnar Axelsson, Untitled, East Greenland, 1995. Axelsson, Ragnar. Last Days of the Arctic. Reykjavik: Crymogea, 2013. Print.

Fig. 30. Ragnar Axelsson, Untitled, East Greenland 1997. Axelsson, Ragnar. Last Days of the Arctic. Reykjavik: Crymogea, 2013. Print.

For another example, in Last Days of the Arctic Axelsson has photographs a day when three experienced mountaineers were killed and explains what it felt like to be there. He

! 74! writes, “[t]he air is filled with a sense of threat. The howling wind hurls up the snow so one can barely see between houses. A glacial storm, piteraq, is looming” (74). This is the photograph of the approaching storm (fig. 31):

Fig. 31. Ragnar Axelsson, Untitled 1996. Axelsson, Ragnar. Last Days of the Arctic. Reykjavik: Crymogea, 2013. Print.

Another image shows two sled dogs struggling after falling into the water—the risk associated with travelling over Arctic ice is clearly depicted (see fig. 32).

Fig 32. Ragnar Axelsson, Kangertittivaq, East Greenland 1996. Axelsson, Ragnar. Last Days of the Arctic. Reykjavik: Crymogea, 2013. Print.

! 75! Axelsson goes on to describe one beautiful yet treacherous night of photographing the aurora borealis in East Greenland:

It can be a bit dangerous to take photos in the middle of the night when beer is

being heavily consumed. Without any warning, a window of a small house opens,

an armed man sticks his head out, yells into the air, and fires his gun a few

times. The bullets bouncing off the rocks make a disturbing sound. The man yells

again and closes the window; he probably thinks he saw a ghost and that he’s

taken care of it with his gunfire… The following morning the same man is in the

sweetest mood, gearing up his dogs for a hunting trip out onto the ocean ice field.

(75)

Fig. 33. Ragnar Axelsson, A Husky waits for his food outside an old woman’s house in Sermiligaaq, East Greenland, 1997. Axelsson, Ragnar. Last Days of the Arctic. Reykjavik: Crymogea, 2013. Print.

Alas, an altogether different image of Greenland and its communities is presented in

Axelsson’s book (see fig. 33. above). A less idealized Greenland is explored here. Or

! 76! perhaps it is just idealized in another way, one that makes the people he photographs seem tougher, more remote and more rugged in their ways of life than southerners are.

As I have stated already, what is clear is that there is no one ‘true’ story or image of Greenland. And it is true that all stories are all subjective and constructed views, none more ‘true’ than the next. Yet it is surely worth examining the place-perceptions that are created when internationally published photographs of a small nation like Greenland, are taken by foreigners and introduced by yet more foreigners. If we photograph what impresses us most about a place we travel to, and we show these photographs to others like us, then aren’t we then creating a collection of images that say more about us in a way? What we chose to photograph is an expression of what we find note-worthy, as

Susan Sontag has stated “[t]o photograph is to confer importance. There is no subject that cannot be beautified; moreover, there is no way to suppress the tendency inherent in all photographs to accord value to their subjects” (28). Sontag is referring here to the portrait work of Diane Arbus, and the artist’s fascination with ‘odd’ people. But her comment can be applied to landscape too, and reminds us that photographs, especially those that are internationally circulated by major publishers, underline points of view as more important than others. It is true that Axelsson too is a foreigner, and at times presents a sublime landscape in his photography. For example, as is the case with his untitled and also uncaptioned colour photograph of an enormous iceberg (see fig. 34.). It seems the appeal of the icebergs strong regardless of what kind of photographers we are.

! 77!

Fig. 34. Ragnar Axelsson, Untitled, N.d. Last Days of the Arctic. Reykjavik: Crymogea, 2013. Print.

The fact that this image is presented as an unidentified scene in a chapter of Axelsson’s monograph serves as an example of the kind of undifferentiated space that is typical of photography about Greenland from any genre, whether it is art photography or photojournalism. The photograph appears in the introductory pages of the monograph in a section titled Nanoq: The Polar Bear. Though this motif appears more rarely in

Axelsson’s work, it does appear. All of these monographs, it is clear, present a foreigners view of Greenland to the world. It leaves me wondering what the local people would chose to picture, had they the opportunity—and the inclination—to do so. As it happens, I encountered one exhibition in Greenland of this very nature, it will be discussed further in the coming pages of chapter one and in chapter two.

To return now to Itkonen’s work, her website www.tiinaitkonen.com does not offer a specific section that relates to her Avannaa monograph, (as it does with her

Inughuit monograph), but instead presents an “Iceberg Gallery 2006-12” and a

“Greenland Landscape 2002-10” gallery. In these galleries, as in Avannaa, we find a variety of photographic landscapes that, like the eighteenth century and nineteenth

! 78! century travel writing previously discussed, over-represent Greenland as a frozen and wintery place. In addition to the above outlined critiques—although Itkonen is said to have spent countless days in Greenland, and Siitari describes Greenland as Itkonen’s second “home”—her photographs fail to impart a sense of any season but winter, nor any kind of lifestyle but that of dog-sledding (n.pag.). Greenland’s capital city is Nuuk, and boasts a population of 16,800 people near the Southwest coast of Greenland. There are two hotels, a variety of smaller accommodation options, the National Museum, a craft beer microbrewery, a parliament building, fine dining restaurants and an international airport (Greenland). The second largest city is Sisimiut, it lies forty kilometers north of the Arctic Circle with a population of 5,600 residents (Ibid). It is an important port for cruise ships, and offers a city bus service, a taxi service, hotels, fly-fishing tours, hotels and the Sisimiut Museum (Ibid). Nowhere in any of the above-listed photographers works did I get any sense of the existence of urban life in Greenland.

Photographs used to promote Greenlandic tourism on greenland.com tell a very different story than do those of Itkonen, Seaman, Axelsson or Becker. Granted that each artist is following his/her own motivation for photographing in Greenland and is not in the business or tourism promotion, it is still interesting to observe the different notions of place that emerge. The following photographs are featured on Visit Greenland and picture modern buildings, many people of all ages dressed in contemporary clothing, both winter and summer seasons, as well as recreation and tourism scenes (see. fig. 35., fig, 36. and fig. 37. below).

! 79!

Fig. 35. Greenland, Untitled 1. Visit Greenland. “Greenland”. Visit Greenland. N.d. Web. 25, June, 2015. .

Fig. 36. Greenland, Untitled 2. Visit Greenland. “Greenland”. Visit Greenland. N.d. Web. 25, June, 2015. .

! 80!

Fig. 37. Greenland, Untitled 3. Visit Greenland. “Greenland”. Visit Greenland. N.d. Web. 25, June, 2015. .

Rarely, if ever, in the photographs of Itkonen, Seaman and Becker is there any sense of an urban life, modern amenities (beyond occasional street lights), a warm summer season17, or the fishing, mining and tourism industries where many Greenlanders work. All of these observations support my analysis that Greenland has been depicted as a wintery and peripheral space by foreign artists, who together (with good intentions) perpetuate nineteenth century notions of a sublime and mythic space. The ramifications of such actions will be discussed in the coming sections.

Tiina Itkonen, in addition to mythic images of icebergs and wintery landscapes, also offers a unique series titled Inughuit (1995-2002) on her website. (The series was also published as a monograph titled Inughuit: Tiina Itkonen in 2004 by Finish publisher

Libris.) The website series features photographs of modern Northern Greenlandic Inuit

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 17 Greenland has an Arctic climate with a temperature of ten degrees Celsius in the summer months. Yet in the south and near the innermost parts of the fjords, the temperatures can reach above twenty degrees Celsius. (Visit Greenland)

! 81! families (also known as the Polar Inuit) and individuals. In a colourful series of upbeat and beautifully composed images, the photographs present children and adults both relaxing inside their homes (see fig. 38. and fig 39.below) and working or socializing outdoors.

Fig. 38. Tiina Itkonen, Taateraaq, 2002. Tiina Itkonen. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, June, 2015. .

Fig. 39. Tiina Itkonen, Jonas, 2002. Tiina Itkonen. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, June, 2015. .

! 82! After reviewing Itkonen’s list of press releases and articles featuring her work

(found on her website), it is clear that her Inughuit series received a great deal of international media attention up until 2010. Articles and press releases about her exhibitions appear in English, Japanese, Russian, Finnish and Spanish languages. In an article published in the Swedish based Journal of Northern Studies (2011) author Frank

Moller states “Itkonen’s portraits offer an alternative to the usual representational mode of approaching the North mainly as vast and empty landscapes and/or in terms of hunting” (42). He suggests that her work can be seen as “an attempt to give voices and images to people and peoples marginalized, silenced and either made invisible or visualised for colonial purpose and for the purpose of satisfying the curiosity of southerners as to what they regard as “exotic” peoples” (Moller 44). Based on that statement it seems as though Axelsson’s photographs are the kind that satisfy the curiosities of southern people in that he does readily depict scenes of hunting. Thus a case can be made for weaknesses and strengths in both of their perspectives.

Indeed, Itkonen’s Inughuit series offers a refreshing, yet not unprecedented, perspective on the people of Northern Greenland by presenting children and adults in their own homes, laughing, playing, smoking and posing for her in a mixture of traditional and modern clothing. In all but one photograph, the people that appear are identified by their first names, providing a personalized perspective rather than an objectified and typological one. Before Itkonen and nearly 100 years after William

Bradford had reached Greenland, the young Danish photographer Jette Bang (1914-1964) made it her personal project to document the people and culture of Greenland. With her

“fly on the wall” approach and goodwill offers of items from Denmark, she was able to capture daily scenes of Inuit life in an un-staged and relaxed manner (Bang 36). The

! 83! Administration of Greenland, who allowed her entrance into the country, paid her living expenses in exchange for the photographs that she made. Her photographs and documentary films are said to provide an important, and uniquely female, record of

Greenlandic Inuit life in the 1930s through the early 1960s; a record that contemporary

Greenlandic peoples have had a chance to look through in 2006 and discover images of their families an older ancestors (Bang 39).

Bang’s photographs, like some of Itkonen’s, are celebrated for a ‘family photo album’ approach that show Western and Eastern Greenlandic community members working, talking and laughing together. And although sometimes a community name or generic description such as “Women and Children in a heap of Coal, Ammassalik /

Tasiilaq, 1961” is provided instead of individual names, Bang’s work is thought to be a community-minded record of daily Inuit life in Greenland (Bang 194). Whether Itkonen’s work has been influenced by Bang’s is unknown to me; however, there are similarities in approach. Writing for The Arctic Journal Online, Michael Keldsen refers to Bang’s photography as one of the best documentary records of Greenland. He describes Bang as

“one of the most notable photographers to chronicle Greenland in pictures”. He goes on to say that her images “realistically depicted Greenland’s emergence from an Eskimo hunting society to a modern civilization, and the enormous price the process exacted”.

Two examples of her photography appear below (see fig. 40. and fig. 41).

! 84!

Fig. 40. Jette Bang, Godthåb / Nuuk, 1956. Bang, Jette. Jette Bang: From the Belly of the Polar Bear. Nuussuaq, Greenland: Milik Publishing, 2014. Print.

Fig. 41. Jette Bang, Children in front of car, Julianehåb / Qaqortoq, 1956. Bang, Jette. Jette Bang: From the Belly of the Polar Bear. Nuussuaq, Greenland: Milik Publishing, 2014. Print.

In Itkonen’s Inughuit series, a sense of a contemporary community is created and complimented by images that locate the Polar Inuit as people who are well prepared in their far northern Arctic environment. Through photographs of summer and winter

! 85! seasons, weather worn buildings, simple yet cheerful interiors, fur coats, and polar bear skin trousers hanging on a laundry line, for example, viewers can begin to understand something about the cold, yet not eternally frozen, environment of the Inughuit peoples.

Bang’s mostly black and white photographs also picture community members whaling, sleeping, reading, working and laughing in sometimes worn looking environments. While

Bang and Itkonen (as visitors) cannot ever represent Inuit culture from the perspective of the local people, Bang’s photographs and Itkonen’s Inughuit series are valuable examples that offer more than “contemplative” views or appearances of place (Ibid).

1.7 Contemporary Art Photography, Significance of Place Perceptions

Now that I have discussed the photographs of Becker, Seaman and Itkonen in detail, I will further outline some key factors that will underscore the significance of their work in terms of the creation of place perceptions. I will problematize their photographic projects and seek to underline the critical ground wherein my critiques originate, and wherein I may later position myself as yet another foreign image-maker in Greenland.

With regard to local, national and international reach, the above photographers’ works are widely shown in gallery exhibition and online exhibition or personal website formats.

Their works have been published and exhibited, as already stated, in solo and group exhibitions in multiple countries including Canada, USA, France, UK, Germany,

Australia, Japan and more. It is my view that the collective photographs begin to function as a kind of symbolic field that unfortunately positions far northern regions as vacant and ethereal lands, bravely visited by intrepid and talented expeditioners.

! 86! The impact that various kinds of ‘images18’ have on our perceptions of space and place is widely written about. We learn to expect certain things from the places that we live in, travel to or avoid based on (among other things) the images that we encounter over time. From maps and gallery plaques to advertisements and tourism brochures, imagery creates impressions of places. Once narratives of place become popularized to the extent of becoming ‘common knowledge’, they become established cultural myths.

Photographs are complex, cultural signifiers that can act to establish, sustain or challenge popularly held notions towards specific spaces and places. They can both feed and challenge perceptions that are made about regions or types of places too. Liz Wells states,

“[t]he pictorial offers more than graphic representation. It articulates subjective memory and cultural currencies not only in relation to literal readings of images but also in terms of emotive affects” (Land Matters 4). Indeed, the subjective memory of generations of explorers is held within Arctic motifs of sublime space. The belief in Arctic regions as non-central spaces is exemplified both in the emotionally terrifying or awe-inspiring sublime rendering of the imagery and in the popular circulation of seemingly vacant (or nearly vacant) and eternally wintery expanses of land.

Thus, what begins as one person’s impression (based on their own subjectivity) ends as an accretion of artifacts that together create a site of ‘knowledge’ that is circulated through and by various channels of public dissemination. These artifacts may then be used as the basis for decision-making on personal and societal levels. In his book Places on the Margin, Rob Shields explains that images and ‘imaginary geographies’ of places actually underpin political rhetoric, pervade development policies and contribute to the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 18 Following Canadian author Rob Shields, the term ‘image’ refers to both literary and visual descriptions of places, not necessarily experienced first-hand. For more on his use of the term ‘image’ see Places on the Margin pages 12-14.

! 87! creation of a sense of community (6). He cites research from E.T. Hall (1966) and Doreen

Massey (1984; 1988) wherein images and stereotypes are found to have social impacts

“empirically specifiable” and located at individual and public levels; these impacts are noticed in the rhetoric of “politicians” and reflected even in planning and development policies (Ibid). Just as the American West was pictured as vacant by railroad companies and surveyors to encourage funding and public support for their project, so too can Arctic regions be exploited when they are pictured as containing of only ice, snow and a few local settlements. Thus the problem in trying to promote environmental awareness through sublime vistas of an imaginary North is twofold: the images are portraying the

North as a uniform, threatened and vacant place, an image that is not true, and it is being done by foreign artists who can not speak for local people’s points of views and values.

There are a number of published reviews in print and online formats that feature these three, core photographer’s works. Writing for online edition of The New York

Review of Books, Eve Bowen describes the photographs in Becker’s Broken Line (2007

Hatje Cantz) monograph as “[u]nsentimental and astoundingly beautiful” while “some resemble the sublime landscapes of nineteenth-century painters like Frederic Edwin

Church”. An article in the Journal of the Society for Photographic Education in 2014 outlines Itkonen’s most prominent exhibitions; they include shows at the 54th Biennale de

Venezia, the 17th Biennale of Sydney, the Danish National Museum of Photography and the New York Photo Festival (Siitari Frozen in Time 42). Biologist and climate change expert and activist Dr. Elizabeth Sawin provides an introductory essay for Camille

Seaman’s book Melting Away calling her a kind of “sensing element” that brings back a

“gift” of images that offer a “glimpse if who we are and where we find ourselves” (6).

There are many more articles about Tiina Itkonen and Olaf Otto Becker available online;

! 88! however, they are in Finnish, French, and Spanish—languages which I was not able to read. What is clear is that the photographs are celebrated for their beautiful and sublime appearance, and the photographers are thought of as talented individuals who create timeless and important images. This is not untrue, yet there is much more to these photographs than beauty.

Reviews and introductory essays that accompany their photographs fail to take stock of the notions of space and place that are created—notions that problematically present or uphold tired tropes of an otherworldly North. In his book The Last Imaginary

Place, Robert McGhee underlines the fact that true and false stories of the Arctic have accumulated over time to form “a distant and fantastic Arctic as seen through the window of Western culture” (10). And that our concept of the Arctic is based more upon mythology, history and “artistic conventions” than to the “actual physical reality of the

North” (McGhee 9). His hope in writing the book is to present a human history of the

Arctic so that it becomes less “out of this world” and more familiar to those who might have the impression that the Arctic is a bizarre and alien place (Ibid). Likewise, with her opening remarks in the exhibition catalogue Isi, Øje, Eye, Greenlandic curator Pipaluk

Lykke Løgstrup writes:

Greenland today enjoys a great deal of global attention due to climate change

and the growing interest from the international oil and mining industries. Despite

this, the knowledge of contemporary culture and everyday life in Greenland is not

yet so widespread. (n.pag.)

Her travelling exhibition of photographs by local residents presents a view of Greenland from the perspective of contemporary Greenlandic and Danish culture instead of from

! 89! foreign ones. In the entire exhibition of forty-five photographs there are only a few images of winter and perhaps tellingly, only one that shows a sublime scene of ice (and this was submitted by the Danish-born physiotherapist who is living in Ilulissat). The other photographs include children playing, women four-by-fouring, a man hunting with a rifle, and another man having tea in his living room. They are photographs of a place lived in and experienced by local people, and not contemplative scenes featuring the aesthetic qualities of the landscape—and I will provide more detail on this exhibition in chapter two.

Liz Wells further explains that space is rendered into place through representations made by “cartographers and artists, as well as writers and storytellers”

(Land Matters 3-4). Yet I would suggest that the reverse is also true. These art photographs seem to deconstruct, or perhaps just avoid, Greenlandic places and instead capture and circulate images of mythic space—which is what the local land appears to them to be. Wells goes on to state that if philosophers have a responsibility to “think about how we think”, then artists too have a responsibility to consider “how we picture” and “to reflect upon the implications of thinking through the visual” (Ibid).

Many contemporary art photographers though, are unintentionally working in exactly the opposite way to McGhee—seeking to reintroduce or reinforce alienating, or maybe alienated, views of Greenland. Perceptions of place are important and as Tim

Cresswell explains, “[p]lace is the raw material for the creative production of identity rather than an a priori label of identity” (39). Wells agrees and similarly states that

“[i]magery feeds our desire for a clear sense of identity and of cultural belonging” (Land

Matters 5). Indeed perceptions of Greenland as a distant and unimaginable place, is a cultural construct of another time, and made by non-local people. It is the created identity

! 90! of the Greeks, the early Norse explorers, and the colonial powers that sailed in search of the North Pole and the North West Passage (Ibid). Times have changed, people and places and technologies have changed, and the identity of Greenland in relation to the rest of the world has also evolved. Contemporary art photographers who continue to use nineteenth century motifs insist upon a stagnant and a priori notion of Greenland and refuse opportunities for the creative production of identity in the twenty-first century.

Wells suggests that identity is “neither singular nor fixed” rather it is better thought of as a result of “interacting influences and discourses” (Land Matters 53).

Following the work of David Seamon, Alan Pred, Nigel Thrift and Michel de Certeau,

Cresswell further argues that to think “of place as performed and practiced can help us think of place in radically open and non-essentialized ways” (39). I would like to think of contemporary art photographers as people who are performing the ‘mythic North’ through their photographs, and through their titles and descriptions of their photographs as described above. Thus, the Arctic has been essentialized through artistic performance as a frozen and peripheral world. This has occurred despite the fact that it has always enjoyed a summer season and has been intertwined with the migrating and trading cultures of Northern European, Russia, Britain, North American and others over hundreds and hundreds of years (McGhee 240-74). Greenland has been pictured as a sublime

Northern wonderland just the same, and few opportunities for local influences and discourses has been opened up. Many foreign artists and photographers have dominated the idea of Greenland with a restrictive point of view. Opportunities for creative, local, diverse and valuable notions of place have been underexplored and under-represented by both artists and curators who continue to heavily promote sublime landscapes instead.

! 91! Further complicating the creation of place perceptions about the Arctic, and

Greenland, is that photographs, like maps, are objects of memory that can aid in making things seem ahistorical (Lippard78). Through their tendency to be taken as truthful in certain contexts or modes of publication, photographs support and create myths easily.

Furthermore, Yi Fu Tuan argues that myths flourish in the absence of specific knowledge

(85). Practically speaking, the referential quality of a photograph makes it ‘believable’ today, despite living in an age where digital manipulation is done nearly imperceptibly.

James Elkins explains, “[b]ecause manipulation in digital imagery is so easy…its evidentiary force—its truth value—as an authentic record is put into question (40).

However, for all intents and purposes, people still approach photographs as referential and believable ‘images’ of the physical world. Photographs are still used as objects of authentication, as in the case of driver’s license ID and passport ID. A photograph’s evidential force in the West comes in part from its place in a social hierarchy. Who takes a photo and in what context can decide its importance and credibility. In the case of a typical Western diver’s license, for example, the evidential force comes not from the digital photograph itself but from the authority and reputation of the registry that makes it and the government that requires it19. With the landscape photographs made by Becker, Seaman and Itkonen (as well as others) it’s not the landscape itself that needs to be thought of as verified or falsified. It is the perspective from which the photographs are made, and the connotations that they carry that should be questioned. But because of the verisimilitude of a photograph to the physical world, as

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 19 For more on the development of photography as an instrument of verification and the emergence of government institutions in the nineteenth century, see The Burden of Representation by John Tagg (1993).

! 92! discussed elsewhere already, viewers forget to ask questions about intention, meaning, context, ownership, point of view and so on.

1.8 Re-thinking Popular Motifs: the Sublime, the Otherworldly and the Peripheral

North

The visual and written representations of journeys to Greenland and the Arctic are certainly interesting to study as historical records, and as works of art in themselves. They are understood in relation to an artist’s / explorer’s own and national interests, traditions and counter-traditions too. And, they can be studied as part of another whole; as an accretion of impressions over time, images contribute importantly to global perceptions of place. Daniel Chartier explains:

Imagined spaces, including the North and the Arctic, are constructed by cultural

material—languages, figures, metaphors, figures, etc.—taken from different

sources. They form a rich, complex network of discourses that transmit strong

cultural, political, and ideological values. (29)

Likewise, in Arctic Discourses representations of the different ‘Arctics’ are described as a mixture of actual, perceived and invented accounts and Western understandings formed by an “interplay of expectations and experiences (Ryall, Schimanski and Waerp x)”.

These texts underline the importance of thinking about Greenland and perceptions of place not simply in terms of a physical region or even as a single, unified idea of northerness. Clearly, Greenland is a place that is impacted by a collection of thoughts and perceptions coming from people of different cultural backgrounds, perspectives, genders, time periods and so on. It is important to remember too that the notion of periphery, like

! 93! that of northerness itself, is all relative. Lars-Erik Edlund, editor-in-chief of The Journal of Northern Studies from the University of Umeå, Sweden states:

The North is a region full of contrasts. Its importance has varied greatly

through history and it has been understood as the land of future as well as a

marginalized periphery. Despite the region's rich natural resources,

developments are hampered by sparse population and a peripheral

geographical position in relation to the power and market centres of the

surrounding world.

While Greenland may in fact be a less populated nation that others and located in a far northern and environmentally challenging region (relative to more southerly and well- populated locations) the notion of a peripheral North still should be seen as constructed.

Which regions and places are ‘northern’ is a question that comes up again and again in the literature. What you find in the North, where you think north is, and how and why you get there depends greatly on where you come from. Geographies of the Romantic North:

Science, Antiquarianism, and Travel, 1790-1830 written by Angela Byrne begins with a poem from A. Pope that was written in 1824:

Ask where’s the North? At York ‘tis on the Tweed; In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there, At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where; No creature own it in the first degree, But thinks his neighbor further gone than he. (3)

Thus, in this one example and as early as the 1800s, North is a relative term. Even now, trying to grasp where the Arctic geographically lies is tricky business. It has variable definitions depending on which background you are approaching the topic from. Anka

! 94! Ryall reminds us that North is ““a direction” as well as a place” and that Margaret

Atwood describes it as “a place with shifting boundaries” (Ryall 122). Laurence Smith, in his book The New North (2012) suggests a redefinition of the North that would include a great deal of what is now consider sub-Arctic territory (6-7). In it he suggests a new boundary for Northern territories that would include land at 45 degrees N and above, instead of the current 66.33 degrees N (Ibid). The ‘Arctic’ has been defined by boundaries that exist between the forest and the tundra, or where average temperatures during the hottest month of summer remain below 10 degrees Celsius, or at the latitudinal location where the polar night and the midnight sun emerge (66.33 degrees North) (Ryall,

Schimanski and Waerp xii). In each case a boundary line is drawn between what is near and ‘normal’ to a southern population and what lies outside of that line.

In order to re-think existing and dominant themes with regard to representations of the Arctic, there are two further points I will make. First, ‘Northern peripheries’ are constructed, and ‘place’ isn’t thought of as a geographically specific and fixed point any longer but rather, as Doreen Massey has argued, it is a “constellation of social relations…together at a particular locus” (322). A “particular locus” may be geographically located, ‘virtually’ located, or metaphoric as in ‘the mind’s eye’ or

‘heartland’ (Ibid). Therefore the idea of a peripheral and mythic North is a place held within our minds, wherever we are. It was never a geographical location, but only became thought of one as a result of our representations—our subjective experiences made concrete. Similarly, David Seamon, Allan Pred and Nigel Thrift understand place, not in terms of location but rather in terms of reiterative practice. They emphasize that places are always becoming, tied to bodily mobility, constantly being performed (Cresswell 33-

39). Contemporary art photography is one of these places where constellations of social

! 95! relations emerge or where they are performed. Why then can we not perform new kinds of places with regard to the North? Further to this line of thinking, it is clear that

Greenland is a place that has been performed as peripheral. It has been socially constructed by foreign interlopers as ‘other’ and, in keeping with the colonial perspective of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as a terra incognita to be “discovered”, survived and now saved. We must remember this when looking at representations of

Greenland through time and strive to seek out representations that offer an expanded frame20.

Second, Greenland is repeatedly represented in terms of wintery landscape and undifferentiated space. Space that is often un-peopled, populated instead by mountainous icebergs, snow, glaciers and rock. It is also a space that is often visually indistinct from

Antarctic spaces, to an untrained eye at least. Polar landscapes are often so incredibly foreign to southern eyes that it sometimes is difficult to decipher one location from another, though they may literally be polar opposites. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, no one really distinguished between the Arctic and the North Pole, and even the

Antarctic was considered to be “a franchise” of the Arctic (Tøjner 15). It doesn’t help when well-intentioned curators still present Arctic, Antarctic, and alpine imagery together in one exhibition united by a theme of climate change. Vanishing Ice: Alpine and Polar

Landscapes in Art, 1775-2012 is an exhibition organized by the Whatcom Museum in

USA. The curatorial theme connects landscape art through the discourses of winter, alpine glaciers, environmental change, scientific climate studies and Arctic and Antarctic ice cap exploration. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 20 This perspective—of place as a performed entity—sits in opposition to earlier notions of place defined as a rooted refuge by Yi-FuTuan, or as an authentic space of belonging according to Edward Relph.

! 96! Contemporary curators and artists are highly motivated by environmental themes of ‘vanishing’ landscapes, glaciers, ice and seascapes. A circumpolar theme of climate change and melting ice caps unite the polar photography of Camille Seaman too. In her book Melting Away, landscape photographs of Svalbard Norway, the Antarctic,

Greenland, and Russia follow one another in no particular order. Who, if anyone, lives there and what notions of locality may exist is offered via short descriptions alongside the photographs. The written essays in her book beautifully outline her development as a person and a photographic artist who nurtures, quite by serendipity21, a love of the planet and of polar photography. This love manifests itself in a passionate effort to communicate the importance of being a “good ancestor” to the people of the world who lack the opportunity to witness what she has (Seaman 117). Despite her utter dedication and sacrifice for the cause, from a critical perspective landscape photographs seem to celebrate the appearance of place without getting involved with any of the particulars of it. Thus (some, one, any?) curators and artists would do well to look beyond motif-based organizational strategies and consider presenting alternative collections of work that take into account the development of art within a history of representation that includes the representation of space and place—and not just the depiction of appearances.

Directly or indirectly referring to the Arctic or circumpolar world as one entity is actually a great generalization since there are many individual Arctic nations with unique

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 In her book Seaman explains that she first travelled to the North on a whim after simply given up her seat on an oversold flight and being awarded a free ticket to anywhere in North America in return. She chose Kotzebue, “well above the Arctic Circle” and had an experience that sparked an interest that has turned into a rewarding and challenging career (Seaman 73).

! 97! sets of histories and contemporary cultures22. And although they share some common environmental characteristics owing to their locations within the Arctic Circle, Canada,

USA, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark / Greenland, Iceland and Russia all have very different peoples, customs and governments. Perhaps the chief thing that they have in common is that they share in the phenomena of existing together in a Northern geographical location and an imagined and peripheral place ‘the mythic North’. The majority of the photographs presented by Becker, Seaman and, to a slightly lesser extent,

Itkonen show icy landscapes. Because they are attracted to the icebergs and ice sheets that exist all year round in the Arctic, the photographs give the false impression that

Greenland is always covered in snow and ice. It is true that the summer season is brief; however during my visit in June, the temperature was warm each day (around 15 to 18 degrees Celsius), and green grass was growing amidst the rocky ground. However, it is very difficult to understand that Greenland has a warm summer season at all when we look at dominant representations of snow and ice through time.

Thus, there are multiple and conflicting perceptions and representations of

Greenland in circulation today. As a visiting landscape photographer in Greenland, I want to create a series of art images from an informed perspective; from a perspective that can account for, and smartly position myself within, historic and contemporary practices that are producing place-notions about Greenland. Like McGhee, I want to contribute representations of Greenland that will picture it as a relatable place, and not a peripheral and imaginary place. It is no longer interesting to continue to represent it through a

‘sublime’ and largely colonial-based point of view that fixes the nation as a peripheral !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 22 For more about the individual nations that make up the Arctic see The Last Imaginary Place by McGhee and The Magnetic North: Notes From the Arctic Circle by Sara Wheeler.

! 98! space perpetually seen through non-local eyes. In fact, for artists, publishers, essayists and curators to continue to present Greenland, and Arctic regions, as mesmerizing and largely vacant lands because to do so makes a beautiful and evocative photograph (even if it is in an effort to garner climate change awareness) is shortsighted. There are many other interesting possibilities that can and should be presented.

Nor is it necessary to primarily represent Greenland as a site of environmental threat. Lawson W. Brigham reminds us that the Arctic’s average temperature has in fact risen nearly twice as fast as the rest of the world. Yet it is not only undergoing a transformation due to climate change, but is impacted by global economics and natural resource availability too (Brigham 370-1). Natural resource development of oil, gas, minerals and timber as well as marine tourism and fishing are growing in the Arctic due to global resource needs and over-fishing. In temperate climates tour boats are attracted to

Greenlandic waters in part because it is comparatively safer to travel there due to an absence of pirates (Ibid). Modern times require industry to consider expansion into previously unexplored parts of the world. The U.S. Geological Survey reported in 2008 that natural gas resources that lie above the Arctic Circle “could amount to 30 per cent of the world’s undiscovered supply” (Ibid). As a point of comparison, Brigham points out that Saudi Arabia has 21 per cent of the world’s proven oil (Ibid). Indeed, there are many other points of entry for artistic work that deals with Arctic change. It is a complex region with complex environmental, social, industrial and international factors to consider.

Climate change is a multi-faceted problem, and to focus so heavily on the visual aspect of melting icecaps is, in my view, to capitalize on a popular aesthetic that is commercially lucrative while white washing local populations and their points of view.

! 99! 1.9 Pushing Back

However embedded Greenland is within discourses of ancient Greek legends,

Viking re-settlement and nineteenth century colonial polar exploration, it is of course a local place as well, with its own history to tell. It is an island that is part of the continent of North America yet remains, along with the Faroe Islands, part of the Kingdom of

Denmark. Located just East of the Canadian Arctic and West of the Norwegian Islands of

Svalbard, it extends from 59 degrees North to 83 degrees North. After becoming a Danish colony in the early eighteen hundreds, and later part of the Danish Realm in 1953, Home

Rule was granted to Greenland in 1979. After a referendum in 2009, Greenland changed their official language from Danish to Greenlandic. They took control of their own affairs with the exception of finances, foreign affairs and defense, which still remain under the control of Denmark (Oslund 13). Despite being covered by the enormous Greenlandic Ice

Sheet, the island has been populated along the coastlines by the Saqqaq people from around 2500 BC through 800 BC. From around 800 BC through 1500 AD it was Inuit people descended from ancient Thule culture and Dorset people who populated the island.

Norse settlers, as mentioned earlier, arrived in the 10th century along the southern coasts before disappearing for unknown reasons and Danish settlers reemerged in 1721 and remain there in large numbers today23 (Ehrlich 7; Knuth 12; McGhee x).

Even if Greenland today is becoming a popular destination for scientists, artists and adventure travellers, it is not somewhere that a majority of a more southerly public often will go to. According to Ilulissat Kangia online, Ilulissat is the most popular tourist destination in Greenland because of its proximity to the Icefjord; there are approximately !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 23 For a full account of the various populations of Greenland, see Robert McGhee, The Last Imaginary Place.

! 100! 20,000 visitors to the area each year. As a point of comparison, the Hawaii Tourism

Authority reports that in 2014 there were 8,183,671 visitors to the islands, just by air travel alone (3). Thus, for Greenland it is a curator’s thematic exhibition of past literary and visual representations, a modern day adventurer’s photographs or a contemporary art photographer’s exhibition that will lead the way in telling us what to think about

Greenland. It is problematic that the people of Greenland—those who know the place through lived experience—are largely left out of the conversation. Tim Cresswell writes that "artists and writers attempt to reconstitute places in their work", and that "nations project themselves to the rest of the world" through the objects, symbols and images that they promote (16). To date, as I’ve stated, it is largely foreign-made representations of

Greenland that get projected to the rest of the world.

Cresswell also reminds us that the idea of landscape has a history in mercantile capitalism in Italy and Flanders and that it usually involves a topographic view where the viewer is outside of it. Indeed, behind every ‘landscape’ image there is a place (Cresswell

10). Truly, Western and European conceptions of art came to Greenland beginning in the

1500s and especially after the 1600s (Kaalund 156). Before then Dodil Kaalund explains:

Practically all art forms were deeply integrated in the life of Greenlanders. Song,

dance, and mime were intermediaries in cultic life, a judicial process, and

entertainment. Narrative tradition maintained recollection of ancestral beliefs, and

thus preserved cultural patterns. The visual arts, in particular, both served

religious purposes and formed the basis for everything the individual surrounded

himself with: clothing, implements, boats, and dwellings. (Ibid)

! 101! Thus it is important to consider what happens when a nation itself is not involved with the images that are made about it at certain historical moments? And what happens when the objects and symbols of Inuit culture are ‘replaced’ or overtaken by foreign notions of art such as landscape painting? Kaalund underlines the fact that Greenlanders did not take up landscape art traditions right away and that they referred to Western art as “something that is made strange” (Ibid). When the Inuit did take up landscape art, they did so because they felt Danish and European culture was worth emulating, just as Danish people had previously emulated the culture of Italy, France and Germany (Ibid).

There are therefore numerous local Inuit and Danish representations and records of Greenlandic life and art. Mathias Fersløv Dalager (1770-1842), Hans Zakaeus (d.

1819) Israil Gormansen (1800s), Isak of Igdlorpait, Pele Danielson, Gerhard Kleist, and more recently Peter Berthselsen, Amalie Heilmann, Enok Absalonsen, Aron of Kangeq and Jacob Danielsen are all Greenlandic / Danish pictorial artists who are said to be tied to those first explorations in European art styles (Kaalund 162-63). Early works by

Dalanger and Gormansen are said to show an interest in European styles yet retain a distinctive Greenlandic narrative structure and content. More recent works are left un- described in Kaalund’s book. Out of the four sources that I was able to find on

Greenlandic art24 Kaalund’s is the only one to devote an entire chapter to the development of pictorial arts in Greenland and Visit Greenland online offers a few contemporary names and thematics that I will discuss next. Eigel Knuth’s book offers a focused

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 24 The four sources are: Aron of Kaneq: The Seal Hunter Who Became Father of Greenlands Art of Painting by Eigil Knuth; Folk Art in Greenland Throughout a Thousand Years: Ten Thousand Years of Folk Art in the North by Franceschi, Jorn, Møbjerg and Rosing; The Art of Greenland: Sculptures, Crafts and Painting by Bodil Kaalund and Visit Greenland online.

! 102! overview of the work of Aron of Kaneq only, and Folk Art in Greenland Throughout a

Thousand Years offers, as the title suggest, contains no discussion of painting at all.

As I have shown, widely published contemporary photographs, and before those, popular eighteenth and nineteenth century British and North American polar exploration paintings and photographs receive a great deal more public exposure. Outside of local

Greenlandic and Danish museums, locally made arts are little known. In fact, an entire collection of art including many pieces by Aron of Kangeq, “the Father of Greenlands Art of Painting” was shown to the public by the Danish National Museum for the first time in the 1960s (Knuth 3).

According to Visit Greenland online, Inuit art originally took the form of sealer/ whaler traditions and involved decorating on skin, clothing and tools. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, art works were produced using carving, sewing and beading methods. However, with the arrival of Europeans around the sixteenth century visual art, in a contemporary southern sense, began to develop in Greenland also.

According to Visit Greenland, ‘Aaron from Kangeq’ is celebrated for his detailed drawings and paintings of ancient Greenlandic myths and legends during the middle of the nineteenth century. More recently, Hans Lynge (1906-1988) and Jens Rosing (1925-

2008) are considered to be pioneers in Greenlandic modern art. In the 1970s, after Home

Rule was achieved, Greenlandic art became more political and related their belief in collective stewardship of the land. It is also explained on the Visit Greenland that many current Greenlandic artists prefer to dissociate themselves from traditional art forms and themes, instead immersing themselves in subjects and styles relating to international contemporary art.

! 103! Emerging from spiritual traditions, small, intricate figures called Tupilak (soul of the ancestor) were carved out of bone, tooth or stone. Formerly used to attack an enemy

(imbued with magic by a shaman’s spell), the small figures are now carved anew and sold as well-known and fascinating souvenirs (Ibid). As mentioned above, Danish artists Peder

Balke (1804-1887) and Carl Rasmussen (1831-1903) are two fairly well known painters who made the landscapes and people of Greenland their subjects. And Jette Bang, as discussed, is one prominent Danish photographer whose early documentary photography in Greenland provides valuable visual information regarding local life. Yet despite this local wealth of photography, art and anthropological research, McGhee explains “[t]he

Arctic is still a place that is seen primarily through the eyes of outsiders, a territory known to the world from explorer’s narratives rather from the writings, drawings and films of its own people” (Tøjner and Mathias 5). As outlined above, over time Greenland and the Arctic have become “the ultimate otherworld” for foreign nations (Ibid). Visit

Greenland offers the following description of their country as we can encounter it today:

We rely equally on hunting, fishing, wireless internet and each other to keep the

country together and moving forward. We live under the northern lights in winter

and the midnight sun in summer, in a place where dogsledding and skateboarding

exist side by side, where fishermen and academics come from the same

families, and where we communicate wirelessly one moment and navigate

between huge icebergs the next.

Clearly it is a country that seeks to promote an image of modernity while being proud of its Arctic heritage.

! 104! Happily, there are alternative representations being made about the Arctic and

Greenland that, as with McGhee’s intention, seek to present the North as a non-alien and relatable place. Artists such as Sarah Anne Johnson (Canada), Mette Tronvoll (Norway),

Jurma Puranen (Finland), and curators Pipa Lykke Løgstrup (Greenland) and Julie Decker

(USA) are pushing back, in varying degrees, against the popular and otherworldly motifs of the Arctic with their recent projects. Their works shift an existing emphasis on

“beauty” and aestheticized appearances in landscape art and photography of the Arctic towards a more culturally engaged approach that considers a range of ideas including what it means to be an artist in the Arctic today; who the people are that live in the Arctic; what kinds of colonializing practices have occurred through art in the Arctic; how Arctic people are picturing themselves; and what kinds of space and place are being created through art of the Arctic. These artists photographs and curators projects treat landscape as a part of a cultural geography, and not merely the scenery behind it. Their works will be discussed in greater detail in chapter two.

1.10 Chapter One Conclusion

While not imminently threatening to any one culture or nation, contemporary art photography and curatorial trends in recent years can be seen as hegemonic with regard to other lesser-known European perceptions and depictions of place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and current expressions of space and place created by local Inuit populations. Alternative representations of Greenland in art photography are available, yet they remain under-circulated and perhaps undervalued in terms of commercial profitability and mass-market appeal. This unfortunate perspective results in particular stylized views to be heavily circulated, even if there is a diverse range of subject matter

! 105! available. Yet As only one nation within the eight25 Arctic nations, Greenland is affected by all of the images that emerge from the conceptual ‘family’ of representations that exist. Stories and visual representations of northern travel, Arctic expeditions, winter, cold weather, and dangerous ice become conflated. Together these narratives form an intertextual field within which the distinctions between the Arctic nations often pale in comparison to their now iconic likenesses, or perceived likenesses.

The Arctic is now experiencing a greater degree of warming than the rest of the world, and ice caps are melting at a faster rate than in previous years (Ilulissat Kangia).

Many professional artists have travelled to the far North to bear witness to the landscapes and ice sheets affected by such incredible change. Advancements in travel technologies and northern infrastructure combined with climate change and a lack of sea ice make northern tourism, travel and industry very attractive. Opportunities for travel to the Arctic are no longer restricted to scientific, government or privately funded and hugely expensive expeditions. There are a whole host of travel companies, adventure tours, wildlife tours and artistic residency opportunities today. The Canadian waters of the

Northern Passage, The south and West coasts of Greenland and the archipelago of

Svalbard north of Norway are three sites to which modern day tourists, artists and scientists all flock to explore the Arctic on a yearly basis. If the previous centuries of polar enthusiasm can be described as creating an “image machine”, that machine will have grown exponentially as modern technologies, and methods of travel have produced almost myriad possibilities for northern experiences.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 25 Canada, USA, Russia, Norway, Finland, Denmark / Greenland, Sweden, and Iceland.

! 106! Re-examining the production and circulation of all Arctic photographs through the lens of critical cultural studies, rather than in terms of art history or environmental concern, underlines the ways in which photography creates, sustains and challenges certain kinds of perceived and imaginary spaces. It must be understood that photographs contribute to discourses that impact our understandings of northern places, both real and imagined. Interesting, and perhaps hegemonic, habits of cultural and physical

“landscaping” are brought to light when we stop and ask ourselves what implications these images of Nordicity have, and for whom (Wells, Land Matters 2).

Chapter 2: Research Context

2.1 Contextualization, the Field of Art Photography

As stated in chapter one the well-circulated, awe-inspiring and terror-evoking sublime representations of Greenland by Olaf Otto Becker, Camille Seaman and Tiina

Itkonen are upholding outdated and unproductive notions of the Arctic. However, photographic artists such as Sarah Anne Johnson (Canada), Lars Tunbjörk (Sweden),

Mette Tronvoll (Norway), Jurma Puranen (Finland) as well as curators Pipa Lykke

Løgstrup (Greenland) and Julie Decker (USA) are pushing back. In different ways and against the existing popular and otherworldly motifs these recent artistic and curatorial projects take up a range of diverse perspectives on Northern and Arctic regions. Their works de-emphasize conventional and stereotypical manifestations and present instead more critically engaged points of view that explore personal and cultural complexities in

Norwegian, Swedish, Greenlandic, and Finnish Arctic locations.

! 107! 2.1.1 Sarah Anne Johnson

Canadian photographic artist Sarah-Anne Johnson’s (Canada) Arctic Wonderland series is an example of a contemporary landscape photography project that explores both past practices and future possibilities in the Arctic. Johnson’s series is set not in

Greenland but in the Norwegian archipelagos of Svalbard. Beautiful, humorous and even critical at times, this series purposely presents conflicting depictions of a ‘mythic North’ that range from celebratory to apocalyptic. Her series explores, in part, what it means to be an artist in the Arctic today; in the Fall 2011 issue of Canadian Art Magazine she explains her conflicting feelings about being there to author and art critic Nancy Tousley by saying “[i]f I am standing here, it’s all over” (119). She is referring to the idea that the

Arctic used to be a distant place where only well-outfitted expedition groups went—and even they were sometimes unable to return due to the extreme environment. Today, as discussed in chapter one, there are many opportunities for travel in the far North, the biggest restriction being the cost in getting there. With so many travel opportunities available, it is clear that times have changed. Now that the once ‘extreme’ places on earth are easily accessed by common tourists, it is a sign that there must be few, if any at all, untouched places left on Earth. And her photographs, instead of re-tracing old motifs, problematize the changes and explore the impact of this new era of an easily accessed

Arctic.

Her photographs of Svalbard include landscape prints of sea and snow-scapes that have been painted onto with ink and gouache, or scratched into and embossed with lines and structures (Ibid). They are photographs that present both the fact of the landscape she encounters and the fiction that she imagines they could become one day in the future. Her photographs act as sites where different possibilities are tried out: brightly coloured,

! 108! painted fireworks light up a pastel blue sky in some images (see fig. 42.), while in others black smoke entangles the fireworks and ruins their celebratory energy; glowing domes, enormous pyramids and black or tan rectangular boxes sit atop snowy landscape, sometimes looking innocent and at other times seeming threatening.

Fig. 42. Sarah Anne Johnson, Explosions 2011. Bulger, Stephen. “Sarah Anne Johnson”. Stephen Bulger Gallery. Np. N.d. Web. 10, June, 2015. .

In some images she manipulates the scene with Adobe Photoshop, inserting an “Arctic

Circle” banner that is held in the hands of a joyfully-jumping person, or letters that spell out ‘Arctic Wonderland’ (see fig. 43.) while in others painted bursts of grey and black smoke loom over top black waters (Ibid).

! 109!

Fig. 43. Sarah Anne Johnson, Arctic Wonderland 2011. Stephen. “Sarah Anne Johnson”. Stephen Bulger Gallery. Np. N.d. Web. 10, June, 2015. .

Svalbard is an island amidst an archipelago that lies north of Norway and roughly half way between Franz Josef Land and Greenland. It is an island without an indigenous population: according to author Sara Wheeler the Paleo-Eskimo peoples stopped in their migration before they reached it (173). Though Johnson’s photographs do still evoke a feeling of awe, the awe comes from imagining what could happen to Northern regions in the future and not from a conventional and aesthetically based landscape representation.

Instead of presenting scenes that are received as beautiful and ‘truthful’ documents,

Johnson spins both utopic and dystopic narratives that raise questions about humankind’s place in the Arctic. She thinks of herself and those she travels with as “cheerleaders” for the Arctic and tells Tousley that she is concerned for the future of the Arctic and how people behave in it (Tousley 123). Now that a larger segment of the global population has access to the Arctic, will they take care with it, or pollute it? Will continued development in tourism in the Arctic contribute to a positive future for the environment, or will it be overwhelmed with infrastructure needed to accommodate large numbers of tourists? Will

! 110! nothing change, or will everything change? These are some of the questions that emerge for me, while looking at Johnson’s series.

Johnson did not travel alone to Svalbard. She was a participant upon the first

Arctic Circle residency along with fourteen other artists and two scientists (Tousley 120).

The Arctic Circle is a competitive application-based artistic residency program for artists and innovators from around the world. Since 2009, The Arctic Circle residency has been taking between eighteen and fifty-two participants each year to the Archipelago of

Svalbard in order to explore, learn, experiment and ultimately exhibit their work publicly upon returning home. Tousley explains Johnson’s series by stating that it “imagines a place suspended in a past/present/future time, whose character is in part a pristine wilderness, a theme park and a magnificent ruin” (Tousley 123). It was interesting for me to re-read this article about Johnson after returning from my own visit to the Arctic.

Tousley describes how Johnson had planned to make art about the experience of the residency, but that the experience of the sublime Arctic overwhelmed her. She was left wondering what she would do with that experience and how she could make art about “a cause” (Tousley 119-22)?

I had a similar experience and despite wanting to present an alternative viewpoint to the sublime North, I did find the experience of the Arctic at times to be awe-inspiring.

Johnson has succeeded in presenting an alternative point of view to the ‘contemplative’ view that I outlined in part one. Her photographs instead, urge viewers to think of these landscapes in terms of the past, present and future actions of all of us. Will we choose to make the Arctic into a Hollywood style “wonderland”, have artists, including herself, travelling with dozens of other artists and concerned researchers already created a

! 111! wonderland out of Svalbard, do the photographs that she makes contribute to the protection or the further exploitation of Arctic regions through their public reach?

Despite the fact that I consider Johnson’s series to be one that presents an alternative to the popular motifs discussed in part one, problematic notions of peripheral and undifferentiated space still emerge in relation to her work. Writing for the National

Gallery of Canada’s online publication Magazine, associate curator Andrea Kunard describes Johnson’s series in the article “Sarah Anne Johnson’s Arctic Wonderland”:

In works reminiscent of historical photographs, she captures the region’s vastness

and majesty: stolid icebergs float beneath tumultuous skies in empty grey seas,

and barren mountains rear up out of icy waters.

Kunard chooses to highlight the majesty of the region and the appearance of the icebergs and mountains rather than to comment upon Johnson’s insightful narratives. Again, the impetus for some curators to favour traditional narratives and prioritize aesthetic qualities over critical ones in landscape art is highlighted. Although Johnson’s work makes a concerted effort to be more than a “contemplative” view, the curator makes no mention of the artist’s deeper concerns and intentions. Kunard goes on to contextualize Johnson’s series as part of an established Arctic theme that has “been a constant presence in

Canadian art” (Ibid). She points to “the multitude of prints, drawings and sculptures produced by Inuit artists with Inuit themes” but without naming anyone or anything specifically (Ibid). Kunard also lists art by British explorer George Back as well as anonymous photographs from the A.P. Low Expedition to northern Canada, Arctic art

! 112! from Group of Seven members Frederick Varley26, Lawren Harris and A.Y. Jackson27,

Inuit art by documentary photographer Peter Pitseolak and contemporary art about nature by Canadians Richard Holden and Marlene Creates. All of these artists and Johnson are grouped together in order to organize her article around the theme of Canadian artists who make art about the ‘North’ and ‘nature’. While her theme testifies to the popularity of

Arctic art by Canadian artists, it unfortunately underplays the important critical questions that Johnson raises. Nor does it outline the points of view from which any of the artists approach their works.

2.1.2 Lars Tunbjörk Like Johnson, Lars Tunbjörk has similarly worked to create a counter narrative to popular sublime representations of the North. Instead of picturing an idealized ‘great white North’ he explores the mental state of people living in polar darkness in Sweden.

Tunbjörk is known for his deadpan style and presentation of realistic images of urban life; using flash photography he creates stark images that capture the depressive mood of northern Europe during this season (Decker 98). Instead of scenes of a winter wonderland or vistas of frozen landscapes, Tunbjörk presents everyday photographs of the places where people live and work. Even in the Arctic, dogs wait for their owners to return home from work (see fig. 44.), children make snowmen that get dirty from street grime (see fig.

45.) and snow falls almost too deeply to be shoveled.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 26 Varley travelled from Canada to Thule Greenland and back in 1938. His journey lasted three months aboard the R.M.S. Nascopie and yielded sketches and paintings of Arctic landscapes and people. For further reading see “Historicist: North Aboard the Nascopie” by Kevin Plummer. 27 Jackson travelled twice to the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, first in 1927 and again in 1930 with Harris. For further reading see “Art and Arctic Sovereignty: A.Y. Jackson, Lawren S. Harris and Canada’s Eastern Arctic Patrols” by Elizabeth Agnes Ladon.

! 113!

Fig. 44. Lars Tunbjørk, Kiruna, 2004. Decker, Julie. True North: Contemporary Art of the Circumpolar North. Anchorage: Anchorage Museum, 2012. Print.

Fig. 45. Lars Tunbjörk, Stockholm 2006. Decker, Julie. True North: Contemporary Art of the Circumpolar North. Anchorage: Anchorage Museum, 2012. Print.

! 114! Indeed, in Tunbjörk’s photographs beautiful scenes of crisp, white snow are interrupted with the reality of ordinary architecture and the black grime of urban pollution. The use of flash makes for harshly lit scenes that consciously lack the poetic construction of traditional and seemingly untouched landscapes of art photography. His photographs instead confront a viewer’s expectation of beauty in a winter snowfall and invite us to consider the reality of what it’s like in the city during a long Swedish winter season (see fig. 46. below).

Fig. 46. Lars Tunbjörk, Stockholm 2004. Decker, Julie. True North: Contemporary Art of the Circumpolar North. Anchorage: Anchorage Museum, 2012. Print. ! ! 2.1.3 Mette Tronvoll

Likewise, Mette Tronvoll’s series titled Svalbard 2014, presents an unsentimental series of images that feature “the relics of Arctic explorations and coal mining activities”, portraits of scientists and the Arctic landscape (Tronvoll 2014). Her portraits are mostly of men and depict various kinds of research; for example in one image two scientists pose in white snowsuits next to a box of equipment, in another a man holds a giant white

! 115! balloon-like device, and in yet another. In this series from Svalbard there is a woman who stands on a hillside with sunglasses on her head, three close-up photographs of the textures of ice, and a man in a black jacket who carefully holds a bird in his hands (see fig. 47 below). The photographs are straightforward portraits that show a bit about what people are doing in Svalbard, but there is little sense of how they feel about it.

Fig. 47. Mette Tronvoll, Svalbard #7, 2014. “Svalbard”. Mette Tronvoll. N.p. 2014. Web. 20 April 2015. .

Although no dates are given for the production of each individual photograph, the series is dated from 2014. Tronvoll’s photographs thus offer a look at modern-day Svalbard and the people who are working there (see fig. 48 below). The landscape is not pictured here as pristine wilderness, rather as a setting wherein studies are being made, often in the warm summer months.

! 116!

Fig. 48. Mette Tronvoll, Svalbard #6, 2014. “Svalbard”. Mette Tronvoll. N.p. 2014. Web. 20 April 2015. .

Therefore, when looked at in contrast to the photographs that typically present the Arctic as a frozen, snow-covered land of glistening icebergs and black seas or coloured skies, these images are surprising. Surprising to me because Tronvoll makes Svalbard look like any other mountainous place. These researchers could be here in Alberta in the Rockies, the landscapes and the people and the clothing that they wear seems familiar to me. The illusion then, of the distant and alien North is revealed through these ‘normalizing’ photographs. Indeed, the environment is pictured in a straightforward fashion, as if to list who was there over the two-year period that this series was made. There is no effort made here to frame the North in terms of the sublime, the peripheral or the otherworldly.

Likewise, Tronvoll’s earlier series from 1998 and 1989 titled Isortoq Unartoq depicts people from the island of Unartoq in the south of Greenland. Her pictures of people sitting in natural hot springs are complimented by portraits of glacial ice at the foot of the inland ice (Tronvoll 2013). Together these early portraits picture the terrain and the people who live there in a non-dramatic manner (see fig. 49.).

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Fig. 49. Mette Tronvoll, Isortoq Unartoq #19, 1999. “Isortoq Unartoq”. Mette Tronvoll. N.p. 2013. Web. 20 April 2015. .

There are no stormy skies, no polar bears lingering near-by in a threatening stance and no wind-swept frozen shorelines to view here. Tronvoll describes her intentions in this series on her website, she states, “[t]he photograph conveys the relationship with the world that each person bears inside themselves. In the manner a pose is assumed or not, there is social meaning, custom” (Ibid). Thus this series is not about the appearance of the land, rather it is about the appearance that the individual chooses to present to the photographer. Like Johnson and Tunbjörk, with these two projects Tronvoll avoids clichéd representations of the North as a frozen and empty frontier. Instead she offers personal observations and conceptual portraits of people who live and work, at least in part, in communities in Norway and Greenland.

If place is, as Yi Fu Tuan believes, space that has been imbued with meaning through personal experience then the artists outlined above provide a means through which a public at large can make a modern-day connection to the Arctic (6). It is a connection that presents the Arctic as a lived-in, experienced and relatable place. The

! 118! alternative, and aesthetically based contemplative view (whether topographically or environmentally driven) presents Arctic regions as foreign and alien space that exists either to be explored and conquered or ‘saved’ as empty and pristine land. Neither of these options leaves room for complex, and more importantly, peopled versions of place.

2.1.4 Jorma Puranen and Janet Biggs

Finnish artist Jorma Puranen is also an artist who creates art that importantly reflects on past practices and uses of photography in the Arctic. Imaginary Homecomings

(1991-1997) involves re-photographing portraits from 1884 that were made of Sami people by non-Sami anthropological visitors (fig. 50.). Puranen found the photographs, which were housed in the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, and then physically and metaphorically re-placed them into their homelands by making copies of them and taking them back the places in which they were made. (Wells, Land Matters 252-53). Liz Wells described Puranen as one of Finland’s best-known and critically incisive artists; his work considers the role of photography as a tool in imperialism and colonization (Ibid). Wells writes:

More generally his work interrogates ways in which art practices, historically,

have been implicated rhetorically in the exercise of power. Puranen is primarily

interested in stories relating the ‘otherness’ of the Arctic. His work points to the

limited perspectives which, historically, masqueraded as ethnographic

‘knowledge’ whilst also operating to legitimise the authority of the colonialist

through the distancing effect of categorizing peoples as ethnically ‘other’. (253)

! 119!

Fig. 50. Jorma Puranen, Imaginary Homecoming, 1992. Wells, Liz. Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity. London: I.B. Tauris, 2011. Print.

Upon returning the copied images back to northern Norway and Sweden, Puranen photographed the acrylic prints outdoors amidst the snowdrifts of the Arctic (Wells, Land

Matters 212). This project then challenges the practice of ‘othering28’ and invites viewers also to think of the Arctic not in terms of vacant space, but rather in terms of these people’s home and history. Alas, when the various countries and places of the Arctic are thought of or pictured as marginal, this project smartly asks, marginal for whom (Wells,

Land Matters 252)?

In addition to the above photo-based works, another artist who is working to counter popular narratives of a mythic North with critically conceived art is Janet Biggs.

A video artist who engages with the history of representations of the North, Biggs offers a contemporary commentary that critically reflects upon the practice of heroic, colonial voyages. Her video installation Fade to White made in Svalbard in 2010 follows the challenging and solitary journey of a crewmember as he kayaks past glaciers and polar !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 28 ‘Other’ is a term made in reference to defining self through difference, with the other prescribed as being abnormal in some way (Sturken and Cartwright 104).

! 120! bears in the high Arctic (Biggs). The video installation combines the kayaking footage with soundtrack and video footage of counter tenor John Kelly, who sings mournfully and

“signals the waning of male dominance” according to jbiggs.com. Together these elements reveal the “myth of the solitary white male explorer” and as Biggs explains:

The desire to hold onto the notion of the ‘great white north’ as a blank space awaiting interpretation only reinforces the idea of the colonial polar hero. The ‘virgin’ north has now been mapped, surveyed, and mined, but increased knowledge has not replaced endless fantasies of discovery. (Ibid)

Refreshingly Biggs finds a way to challenge lasting myths, and although hers is not art photography, it is included here as an excellent example of critically informed Arctic art

(fig. 51. and 52. below).

Fig. 51. Janet Biggs, Fade to White, 2010. Untitled Video Still 1. “Fade to White”. Janet Biggs. 2010. Web. 20, April, 2015. .

! 121!

Fig. 52. Janet Biggs, Fade to White, 2010. Janet Biggs. Untitled Video Still 2. “Fade to White”. Janet Biggs. 2010. Web. 20, April, 2015. .

While Biggs presents an opportunity for the questioning of male dominated, heroic Arctic travel she raises the question of why we still desire to hang on to the notion of the ‘great white North’? Although this question remains unanswered in her work, others have offered possibilities to consider. Rob Shields suggests that the habit of thinking of geographical places as peripheral occurs as a result of a need to rank ourselves in relation to one another. To relegate ‘Northern’ places as peripheral is to underscore our centrality in culture, and therefore importance (Shields 3-4). Additionally, Shields suggests that

Canadians in particular are “united” from West coast to East coast through a shared conception of a Northern wilderness (61). This nationalistic shared space acts to smooth over divergent cultures, languages and practices to produce an emotionally powerful place-image that unites us (61-62).

On a more global scale, Liz Wells considers landscape as the cultural representation of space as place wherein national identities are formed and challenged

(Land Matters 211-13). She offers the example of mountains as representative of independence for Norwegian nationalists at the end of the nineteenth century, or woodlands as important in Swedish and Finnish consciousness (Ibid). By contrast, Wells

! 122! points out that it is British rural lands that feature strongly in nationalistic imagery of

England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Landscape art, be it painting or photography, reflects long periods of time over which the lands of Britain have been peopled by various groups and cultures. Thus the British landscape has metonymically come to stand for the nation and its heritage, as distinct from the rest of Europe (Wells, Land Matters 163).

Thus notions of an otherworldly and mythic North, as represented in landscape art, can be understood to function in a similar manner. In contrast to each country’s own national image, the Arctic North stands as a version of other. Pictured mainly by outsiders through history, we have little in the way of a local, nationalistic voice to listen to from the North

(Ibid). With the work of the above artists, alternative perspectives and some local voices are beginning to be heard. Perhaps through their work, and the work of contemporary curators, images of the North will continue to take new forms and offer new stories to re- conceptualize a long-held outsider’s notion of North.

What makes the above projects interesting is that the artists show that they are aware of historical events, past and present artistic representations, and past and present attitudes towards the Arctic and those who live / have lived there. They make stereotypes visible and re-imagine Northern and Arctic places through creative inquiry. By asking questions such as who is landscape imagery made for, who is pictured or erased from imagery, or what kinds of activities take place in the Arctic now these artists de- mythologize the North. Though it may be tempting to photograph again and again wintery wonderlands and mesmerizing topaz blue icebergs, or images of heroic adventure and danger-filled feats of survival, one must remember that these images belong to what I’ll call the realm of ‘pleasure’. They are created to visually thrill or emotionally provoke feelings of awe. There is a time and place for this kind of art, to be sure. Yet there is also

! 123! a need for art that looks out for and calls attention to the cultural values and currencies that circulate through imagery. The above-described works do just that, and again, I’ll reiterate, the take up Doreen Massey’s invitation to promote a progressive notion of place that is useful for these times and not reactionary (Massey 319).

Likewise, while environmentally-minded art aims to encourage responsible citizenship and care for endangered places and species it sometimes falls short of ‘doing’ more than being beautiful to look at. Stunning landscapes by Seaman, Becker and Itkonen may eventually fade into a sea of gorgeous images and be forgotten. They lack the cultural context that makes Johnson’s and Puranen’s work so impactful and so distinct.

To picture a landscape or a culture beautifully and say “look, this is important and we’re losing it” is in fact note-worthy work. But to create photographs that smartly show past or current practices in terms of their cultural impact, and to visually correct those practices in a creative and engaging manner, is invaluable. To see what we have, and what is endangered is remarkable, but to learn where we have misunderstood, misrepresented or now know better is crucial. If art is supposed to invite viewers to look under the surface of the image and look at things in new ways, as Lucy Lippard suggests, then they must be more than technically perfect and compositionally beautiful (Ibid). Curators too, like those discussed next, play an important role in these discussion crucially allow for critically engaged, public engagement to take place. The following two curators have taken steps with their recent projects to pull together representations of Arctic places from diverse local and internationally based artists.

! 124! 2.1.5 Pipa Lykke Løgstrup and Julie Decker

Pipa Lykke Løgstrup (b. 1976, Greenland) recently curated an exhibition in 2014

(with a published catalogue) titled ISI ØJE EYE. In the introduction Løgstrup states that this collection marks the first time that a work has been published with photographs taken by Greenlanders themselves. She underlines the fact that early photographic records of

Greenland made in the 1850s were most often taken by Europeans. Inuit people, she states, were most often photographed yet did not take any pictures themselves (Løgstrup

N. pag). On view at the Ilulissat Kunstmuseum during my visit, this exhibition thus provides a local and ‘insiders’ perspective of Greenland with forty-five photographs that include posed portraits, spontaneous moments as well as landscapes and townscapes.

Each photograph in the exhibition was juried by a panel of three professionals; Arnajaraw

Støvlbaek (b. 1976, Copenhagen) a graphic artist at the Iceland Academy of Arts and

Director of Taseralik Cultural Centre in Sisimiut in Greenland, Aka Hansen (b. 1897,

Denmark) film-maker and Director at Uilu Stories in Copenhagen and Ivars Silis (b.

1940, Latvia) a photographer and writer. There were one hundred and seventy-one entries in five different categories: open, dream, the world, life, or self. Alongside each image in the exhibition and catalogue is a description provided by the photographer listing their name, year of birth, residence, occupation, title and year of photograph and an optional caption (fig. 53. Through fig. 57.).

! 125!

Fig. 53. Peter Sørensen, Food on the Table, Ilulissat 2011. Løgstrup, Pipaluk, Lykke. ISI ØJE EYE. Greenland: Nebula, 2014. Print.

Fig. 54. Anja Weiss, Polar Bear Hunting, 2012. Løgstrup, Pipaluk, Lykke. ISI ØJE EYE. Greenland: Nebula, 2014. Print.

Fig. 55. Dorthe-Marie Lynge, Christmas Morning, 2012. Løgstrup, Pipaluk, Lykke. ISI ØJE EYE. Greenland: Nebula, 2014. Print.

! 126!

Fig. 56. Agathe Storch, Our Ways, 2013. Løgstrup, Pipaluk, Lykke. ISI ØJE EYE. Greenland: Nebula, 2014. Print.

Fig. 57. Søren Lababsen, The Dream of What is Waiting, 2004. Løgstrup, Pipaluk, Lykke. ISI ØJE EYE. Greenland: Nebula, 2014. Print.

Within the collection of forty-five photographs, there are only a few photographs that feature icy landscapes. The remaining photographs present textures, soft interior or outdoor light, silhouettes, children and seniors, summer and winter seasons, close ups of nature, personal moments, hunting trips and scenes of camaraderie and friendship for

! 127! example. This exhibition and catalogue offers local Inuit and Danish photography about the people, places, dreams, and self-images that are significant to them and therefore, as

Løgstrup states, provides a contemporary record of personal, artistic and cultural life in

Greenland (Ibid). Liz Wells emphasizes the fact that photography can be an act of colonization, and that it “contributes to characterizing sites as particular types of places within the order of things” (Land Matters 56). When we look at the sublime landscape photographs by Becker, Seaman and Itkonen, and the portraits of Itkonen, in comparison to the locally made photographs in this exhibition a clear difference emerges. The same places that are looked upon, thought of, and framed as terra incognita by foreign visitors are home to local people. Amidst the icebergs, snow, dog-sledding, and hunting culture that foreigners are impressed by, there is a modern way of life where people celebrate

Christmas, eat cake, spend time with friends and go to work. The photographs in this exhibition counter popular and spectacular imagery of Greenland by showing everyday moments and imbuing them with importance.

In addition to the work of Løgstrup, Julia Decker from the Anchorage Museum in

Alaska has also recently curated a forward-looking exhibition titled True North:

Contemporary Art of the Circumpolar North. It was on exhibition from May through

September 2012 at the museum’s Rasmuson Center. Anchorage Museum Director James

Pepper Henry summarizes the exhibition goals in the catalogue preface. He writes:

In contrast with the romantic perceptions of the North as a land of pristine

landscapes and uninhabited wilderness as depicted by artists of the previous

century, this exhibition challenges the stereotypes of the past and poses questions

about the North of today and tomorrow. (5)

! 128! This exhibition brings together video art, photography, installation art, sculpture, drawing, painting and more that claims, through a multitude of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ perspectives, to tell the story of a ‘North’ that is in transition (Decker 8). Of particular relevance to this research project is the photography of Alaskan villages by Brian Adams

(b. 1985, based in USA), Alaskan multiple exposure landscapes by Lincoln Schatz (b.

1963, USA), Swedish polar night by Lars Tunbjörk (described above), Russian landscapes by Donald Weber (b. 1973, Canada), Alaskan, Canadian and Russian

Northern landscapes of Subhankar Banerjee (b. 1967, India) Alaskan landscape narratives by Amy Johnson (b. 1976, USA), Norwegian landscapes by Sarah Anne Johnson

(described above), Greenlandic landscapes by Olaf Otto Becker, and ‘American Indian’ portraits by Erica Lord (n.d, USA).

In these works thought provoking questions are raised regarding how environmental changes are impacting communities, how we represent places, the psychologies and politics of place, utopic and dystopic visions of the north, tourism and research in the Arctic and Aboriginal identity. The only photographic works about

Greenland included in this exhibition are from Becker, but they are not of icebergs.

Rather they are landscape photographs, from his 2009 monograph titled Above Zero (also published by Hatje Cantz), that show neat piles of equipment at a Swiss research camp

(see fig. 58.) as well as one photograph of tourists who are experiencing the inland ice

(fig. 59.). There is no mention in the catalogue of Becker’s other well known and widely shown, sublime iceberg photographs.

! 129!

Fig. 58. Olaf Otto Becker, Gas and Firewood, N.d. Decker, Julie. True North: Contemporary Art of the Circumpolar North. Anchorage: Anchorage Museum, 2012. Print.

Fig. 59. Olaf Otto Becker, Above Zero, Swiss Camp, 05, 2008, Point 660, 2, Tourism, Icecap, Greenland Icecap, Altitude 360M. Decker, Julie. True North: Contemporary Art of the Circumpolar North. Anchorage: Anchorage Museum, 2012. Print.

! 130! These photographs by Becker fit the exhibition theme well and present two totally different points of view regarding Greenlandic experiences than his earlier monograph collection Broken Line has. The first is a sobering look at the reality of survival for scientists committed to research on the icefjord, the second a humorous look at tourism that I think nearly everyone can to relate to. I know that I especially can, and have recently been the very person posing and photographing on the glacial ice that Becker depicts.

Many of the artists featured in this exhibition do challenge stereotypes effectively, as with these works of Becker’s as well as Tunbjörk’s and Johnson’s described earlier.

Yet other artists seem only to uphold them. For example Donald Weber’s photograph

Oktyarbrskaya Settlement, Vorkuta, Russia (n.d.) (fig. 60.) seems to exemplify a stereotypical idea of a barren, dilapidated and bone-chilling Russian environment.

Fig. 60. Donald Weber, Oktyarbrskaya Settlement, Vorkuta, Russia. (n.d.). Decker, Julie. True North: Contemporary Art of the Circumpolar North. Anchorage: Anchorage Museum, 2012. Print.

! 131! Likewise, the landscapes of Subhankar Banerjee (b. 1967, India) that are categorized according to colour schemes of white, green / grey and brown only minimally work in the way that they claim to. He suggests that his photographs show that there is more than a

‘great white North’ to be found in northern regions of USA, Canada and Russia.

However, these photographs for me show a variety of beautifully photographed spaces that are only occasionally interrupted by the activities of passing communities or animal groups. They have more in common with Ed Burtynsky’s contemplative landscapes than they do with the multi-layered works of Johnson or Puranen (Ibid). Banerjee’s photographs present aesthetically based balanced compositions out of Arctic landscapes that again position local places as indistinct, visually pleasing space (see fig. 61. through fig. 63.). Johnson instead raises questions about how we will treat Arctic places in the future, and what the impact of easier access will be. Puranen takes a look backwards and underlines the historic practices that presented Sami people as ‘examples’ of Northern inhabitants rather than as people who make Northern Finland and Lapland their home.

Fig. 61. Subhankar Banerjee, Beluga Whale Hunt. Iñupiat and the Whales, 2007. Subhankar Banerjee. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, July, 2015. .

! 132!

Fig. 62. Subhankar Banerjee, Caribou Migration I: Oil and the Caribou, 2002. Subhankar Banerjee. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, July, 2015. .

Fig. 63. Subhankar Banerjee, Installation View, Resource Wars, Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York 2008. Subhankar Banerjee. N.p. N.d. Web. 10, July, 2015. .

Thus, while True North: Contemporary Art of the Circumpolar North makes headway in terms of presenting a collection of contemporary art photography that uses ‘more than

! 133! scenic’ perspectives there are a few curious inclusions as well. Perhaps this is an indication of the difficulty there is in locating photographic works that do explore alternative representations of the Arctic.

The focus of my research project has been representations of Greenland over time and contemporary art photography of Greenland. Thus, this outline of a wider field of contemporary Arctic art provides a necessary backdrop that traces the efforts of artists and curators who, like me, seek to create something more than contemplative landscape art. These works then form a framework within which my own photographic work can be situated and contextualized. My photographic investigations will be described in the coming sections. My final visual projects, like those detailed above, are created with an understanding of the historically based currents and contemporary motivations that yield sublime presentations of Arctic places. And, they are created with the intention of broadening the field of Arctic representation to include images that invite viewers to consider Greenland as a contemporary and worldly place.

Chapter 3: Research Creation

3.1 The Artist-researcher

My visit to Greenland is best characterized as that of an artist-researcher during a short-term visit to Greenland. While I was there to conduct research and to investigate new possibilities for image-making there, I also had a hybrid position as both an artist researcher and a tourist. I stayed in a hotel, booked group tours that other tourists did and ate either in restaurants or in my hotel room using the kitchenette provided. I travelled alone and spoke socially to everyone whom I met. I did not conduct any formal

! 134! interviews as my research is focused on landscape representation. My artistic research can be characterized as a comparative study between a) my experience of the art photographs by Becker, Seaman and Itkonen that depict Ilulissat and other regions of Greenland, and b) my experience of visiting Ilulissat and close-by regions while undertaking excursions that were available to the general public too. I did not have any reason to book individual tours or arrange specific outings, the public tours gave me all of the access that I needed to do my work.

Edward Relph suggests that an individual develops an identity of place gradually through experience. A place identity is not built upon a tabula rasa; rather it is “a complex and progressive ordering and balancing of observations with expectations, a priori ideas with direct experiences, until a stable image is developed” (Relph 59). This describes my process very well; my trip was made up of subtle as well as often arresting realizations as I got to know Ilulissat personally as compared to my preconceived notions.

I do not yet have a ‘stable image’ of Greenland developed in my mind; however, I plan to go back next year to continue exploring and making art. I did not get a chance to visit the inland glacier ice, the capital city of Nuuk, nor did I did I visit any of the close-by settlements on this trip. Largely due to time constraints and cost, I chose to put these activities off until my next visit to Greenland. For these reasons my photographs of

Ilulissat reflect a visitor’s subjective, short and geographically limited experience. During the week my creative research involved the following methods: photographic investigation in Greenland, a comparative study of field observations in Greenland with expectations based on my viewing of art photographs of Greenland and continued readings as outlined in part one.

From June 12th through 18th 2014 I visited Ilulissat Greenland. I kept a travel diary

! 135! each day and recorded what I did, both every-day activities like getting groceries, and research-related activities like reading and photographing. I recorded, for example, what the light looked like, ideas for art making, comparisons between the art photographs that I had seen and my own experience of place, and notes about conversations with people who I met. I also recorded my observations about the landscape and my feelings while experiencing Greenland and an Arctic environment for the first time. As a point of comparison to an Arctic environment, I had only a recent trip to Whitehorse in the Yukon and another to St. Anthony, Labrador. Both of these places are considered sub-Arctic regions that lie below the Arctic Circle (66.6 degrees N), where trees still grow and where the seasons of midnight sun and polar night do not exist. Arctic environments then, are characterized by their location above the Arctic Circle, an absence of trees and both midnight sun and Polar Night seasons.

While photographing or videoing my surroundings (simply in order to remember them) I used my smartphone to collect images. I also used the smartphone when its small size was more convenient or appropriate—for example, while taking a photograph in a hotel, art gallery or restaurant. It seemed more appropriate and subtle to take a quick smartphone image rather than to take out my large digital SLR. However, when I wanted to make a better quality and more thought-out composition to record something that I found either visually or conceptually interesting, I did use my SLR camera for both still photographs and videos. I found that using a neutral density filter was very helpful when photographing the ice. The filter has a gradient coating of grey that provides a neutral density to reduce the light from a selected portion of the framed view. I used it to reduce the difference in the light coming off of the bright white ice compared to the dark blue water and the grey rocky landscapes. I learned immediately that to photograph in these

! 136! high-contrast conditions could be technically challenging on a bright day. I wasn’t sure yet what kind of art imagery I would ultimately make, but when I arrived I felt compelled to start photographing the new and visually interesting small city. I planned to photograph everything that I wanted to in the moment and gathered all of the visual material that I could. I decided that I would assess the data at a later stage of analysis and reflection to avoid preliminary judgments and potentially limiting decisions.

3.2 Research-creation and Practice-based Research

Research-creation, as defined earlier, is a term used by the Social Sciences and

Humanities Research Council. To reiterate briefly, it is defined as an “approach to research that combines creative and academic research practices, and supports the development of knowledge and innovation through artistic expression” (Ibid). Research- creation can also be understood as akin to practice-based research, a term widely used in the UK and Australia to describe approaches that likewise make use of artistic innovation as a primary research activity. Because research-creation is a term used by the Canadian

SSHRC, and because the research texts that I refer to in this dissertation are published outside of Canada, the term practice-based research will be used in this section.

This investigation has been led by the question: if in contemporary landscape photography (within an international art context) there exists a popular aesthetic motif of the sublime North, where did it originate and why is it so dominant still today? What alternative narratives may be created through visual inquiry? What critical and conceptual strategies may be used to do so, and to what end? With a practice-based research project

(also termed arts-based research), first-hand experiential exploration is valued and an emphasis is placed on the artistic process, the creative product, and the critical process of

! 137! engagement. (Sullivan, Making Space 47). At the end of the research process, new knowledge is created and housed within an art object that would not have been possible with the use of alternate or traditional research practices. Various terms are in use internationally and include practice-based research (PBR), arts based research (ABR), arts-informed research (AIR) and practice-led research (PLR). The commonality between these terms that have arisen over time and within different contexts is the notion that legitimate research can and should include knowledge that is formed through critically engaged ‘making’ and ‘doing’. While PBR and ABR may be used interchangeably to mean qualitative, critical research that yields new knowledge through creative practice, differences in meaning are possible with AIR and PLR. AIR can mean, depending on the author’s intention, research that incorporates art making as one strategy for data gathering in an otherwise social scientific qualitative research project. And PLR can be used to describe research about art making itself where new knowledge is “concerned with the nature of practice” and where outcomes “advance knowledge about practice” (Candy 1).

Practice-based research was first established in Australia in 1984 in creative writing; since then practice-based programs in the visual and performing arts have grown rapidly and have become standard in Australia and the United Kingdom (Candy 4).

However Barone and Eisner, in Arts Based Research state that ABR is still not widely practiced in American research centers or schools because it is a process through which

“insights” rather than “final understandings” are made, the latter being the expectation in

“traditional” research environments (Barone and Eisner 1-3). (They make no mention of

Canadian research centers in their text.) ABR is a research practice, they insist, that is valuable defining it as a “vitally interrogative” process that allows viewers to vicariously re-experience human affairs through aesthetic design (Barone and Eisner 23). ABR is

! 138! understood to exist along a continuum where both artists and academics may engage in activities that “make new worlds” and convey “otherwise unavailable social meaning”, and to a wider audience than traditional research could (Ibid).

Likewise, Australian artist, author and educator Graeme Sullivan explains ABR by stating that new understandings of social phenomena arise from an inquiry process that involves creative action and critical reflection. He writes:

Facing the unknown and disrupting the known is precisely what artist-researchers

achieve as they delve into theoretical, conceptual, dialectical and contextual

practices through artmaking. (Sullivan, Making Space 62)

Indeed, in his book Art Practice as Research, Sullivan underlines the notion that with qualitative research such as ABR outcomes of research are based in plausibility rather than probability—as with quantitative research (Art Practice as Research 58). Barone and

Eisner similarly describe the process as one that enables others “to vicariously re- experience the world” and that produces a “disequilibrium within the percipient” to allow

“deep persuasion” to occur (20-37).

With this arts based / practice based methodology in mind, my research has involved photographic explorations on site in Ilulissat Greenland, and is informed by texts from the fields of contemporary art, art history and cultural geography (discussed in chapter one). These research elements come together to inform my questions and the insights gained will come from both literature and theory based research as well as investigative art-making that together form a greater body of knowledge than would be possible with just one of these approaches.

Within a practice-based methodology, I followed a heuristic research process as

! 139! outlined by Clark Moustakas in Heuristic Research: Design, Methodology, and

Applications (1990). Moustakas outlines the phases of heuristic research as initial engagement, immersion, incubation, illumination, explication, creative synthesis and validation. The goal of heuristic research is explained in terms of engagement with a human concern or issue and a devoted persistence in challenging or confronting personal understanding until a deeper knowledge of the phenomena is reached (Moustakas 11).

Heuristic research is described as a process that involves perception, sense, intuition, self- search, self-dialogue and self-discovery; it is an internal and autobiographical process that requires a personal encounter with the phenomena studied (Moustakas 11-15). It is differentiated from phenomenological research, by Moustakas, wherein a direct personal encounter is not required and I liken it to an auto-ethnographic process wherein a personal experience is then related back to wider cultural understanding (15).

Throughout each of my days in Greenland I followed the same pattern of research.

I will briefly summarize my process here before I recount my daily research activities below. During my stay I planned one or two activities per day whether it was an organized group tour, an independent self-guided tour, a hike, a gallery visit, or a photography session; these activities relate to Moustakas ‘immersion’ stage of research where I engaged with my research question in a focused manner on site in Greenland.

After each ‘event’, or at the end of each day, I made notes about the activity and jotted down any observations. I also practiced a daily routine of waking up, eating, walking to the city center or to a tour office and back, eating lunch and or dinner, and getting ready to sleep; the non-research activities relate to Moustakas ‘incubation’ stage of research.

During the incubation stage, the research questions are not at the forefront of the researcher’s attention, rather processes of tacit knowing and intuition are at work.

! 140! In terms of the ‘illumination’ stage, I had moments of realization at different points in the trip (and again after returning home) where I understood something about the day’s events, the photographs of Becker, Itkonen or Seaman or the photographs I wanted to make. While in Greenland, I made a number of photographs that explored different points of view and that were inspired by my daily activities and moments of illumination. This stage of heuristic research, according to Moustakas, is known as explication. Following my initial ‘snap-shot’ taking activities (to remember what I saw, or to capture something interesting) I focused more closely on the question of what kinds of art photographs that I would make in response to my research questions.

After a few days of being in Greenland, I began to see some possibilities for short series of thematically connected photographs. I tried out a variety of different photographic approaches and I contemplated what meanings could come from each of my ideas. These activities characterize my explication stage of research, which also extended to the months after I returned home from Greenland. The creative synthesis and validation stages of research also occurred for me after my return home. They will be discussed in the following section.

At this point it is important to note that the stages of research often overlapped and did not occur in a linear and organized manner. Rather, it was a spontaneous process that evolved organically without rigid timelines. The analysis I provide now has occurred as a result of my opportunity to reflect upon my research process and as a result of detailing my day-to-day activities while providing an account of how my activities relate to Moustakas’s stages of research. This methodology offers a very relevant framework through which to reiterate my process, and provides a clear language through which to express and organize my research for another audience. What follows then is a

! 141! description of my daily activities, further explanation of my heuristic research process and a list of my photographic experiments.

3.3 Daily Journal Entries:

Days One and Two, June 12th and 13th 2014:

On Day one and two I got settled in my hotel room, explored my surroundings and caught my first glimpse of the Ilulissat Icefjord from the ground. I arrived at about one pm and had the chance to photograph the Ilulissat Icefjord from the air as I arrived. Upon arrival I quickly understood the scale of the famous icefjord that I had come to see (see.

Fig. 64. and fig. 65.).

Fig. 64. Kristine Thoreson, Ilulissat Icefjord from the Air, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

! 142!

Fig. 65. Kristine Thoreson, Mouth of the Ilulissat Icefjord and Location of Ilulissat from the Air (with airplane propeller), 2014. Collection of the Artist.

I also had a view of the mouth of the Ilulissat Icefjord from my hotel room by a patio door that led out to a shared porch. In my room I noticed that the blinds were white and quite lightweight; I was surprised not to see black curtains as I had arrived in the season of the midnight sun (twenty-four hour light). I walked into the city center in about twenty minutes, there was a well-travelled walking trail along the roadside and I noticed a great number of joggers travelling up and down the hilly pathways. In town I found a number of shops selling Helly Hanson clothing, Canada Goose coats, Sorel boots, North Face shoes and clothing and other brands. I also found a school, a post-office, a grocery and housewares store, a few restaurants, a fish market, five tour company offices, an art supply store, a bargain store, two convenience stores, and a number of gift shops selling cards, candles, soaps, Inuit sculptures, clothing, seal skin mittens, slippers, shoes, souvenirs, Ox wool, seal skins, T-shirts and more.

! 143! I really didn’t know what to expect to find in the city center, but I was surprised to find so many shops, and such familiar sports and outdoor-wear brands being sold in

Ilulissat. Travel websites that I looked at in advance of my trip did not show much of

Ilulissat, rather they advertised the available tours including boat excursions, dog sledding, hiking and whale watching. I did not do extensive research on modern

Greenland before I left, rather I was excited to just go and see for myself what it was like.

None of the photographers works showed urban scenes or urban people. I came to realize that the art photographs that I had been looking at pictured northern Greenlandic, small communities in a mixture of traditional clothing and contemporary clothing. And by reflecting on my surprise at the urban and contemporary city of Ilulissat, I realized that I had a preconceived notion of Ilulissat as a remote place that would be different from contemporary North American, European or Western places that I had been. I couldn’t have been more incorrect as Ilulissat is a well-developed and modern small city. After I finished exploring the city center for example, I ordered a latté at a local tourist shop, and wrote out post-cards to my friends and family at home just as I would have on any other trip. I decided then that one of my strategies for photographing Ilulissat would be to include this urban environment somehow. And I thought that it was interesting that

Becker, Itkonen and Seaman did not present any urban scenes of Greenland in their works.

In term of heuristic research this first experience, and those that come in the following journal entries, can be explained in terms of the immersion, incubation, illumination and explication stages. For example, the first observation that I had about

Ilulissat as a very urban place came as a result of exploring the city center. The exploration part of my day is the immersion stage where I actively explored the

! 144! environment and compared my experience of Greenland to the art photographs that I had seen before I came. I noted that Ilulissat exceeded my expectations in terms of the availability of modern amenities. The incubation stage of research came during the time that I spent shopping, drinking a latté and writing postcards, walking back to my hotel, making dinner and planning the next day’s events. This was a time for the immediate tasks of the day to be in the front or conscious part of my mind while I unconsciously pondered the events of the day. This unconscious pondering is described by Moustakas as when “the researcher retreats from the intense, concentrated focus on the question” (29).

He further explains:

During this process the researcher is no longer absorbed in the topic in any direct

or alert to things, situations, events, or people that will contribute to an

understanding of the phenomenon. Nevertheless, growth is taking place. The

period of incubation enables the inner tacit dimension to reach its full

possibilities. (Ibid)

The unconscious processes of tacit knowing and intuition are at work during periods of incubation to “clarify” and “extend understandings” (Ibid). Tacit knowing is described by

Moustakas as the capacity to “sense the unity or wholeness of something from an understanding of the individual qualities or parts”; he quotes Michael Polanyi who explains that “[w]e know more than we can tell” (Moustakas 21). Further to this, intuition is described as a process wherein “one draws on clues; one senses a pattern or underlying condition that enables one to imagine and then characterize the reality, state of mind or condition” (Moustakas 23). Together tacit knowing and intuition are at work especially during the incubation period and result in moments of illumination.

! 145! At some point after my initial exploration of the day I was able to articulate the fact I had been surprised by what I found in Ilulissat, and that this surprise was a result of my pre-conceived notions of place that came from looking at photographs and as a result of my previous experiences of northern communities in the Canada; this is the illumination stage. Moustakas defines the illumination stage as “a breakthrough into conscious awareness of qualities and a clustering of qualities into themes inherent in the question” (29). It is a time when new dimensions of knowledge are added or when corrections are made to distorted understandings (Ibid). Part of the illumination stage was the idea to try to include the urban environment in my photographs.

During the next stage of research called explication, I clarified what seemed

‘urban’ about Ilulissat to me and made exploratory and visually investigative photographs of tourist venues, road signs, houses and more. In explication the researcher examines more fully what has “awakened in consciousness” during previous phases and pays close attention to their own thoughts, feelings, beliefs, judgments and understandings. This is a period wherein the researcher is involved with “focusing” and “indwelling” more closely on ideas and feelings that have come from immersion, incubation and illumination

(Moustakas 30).

Over the week I immersed myself in many activities, had many hours for incubation and had many moments of illumination and explication. For the remainder of the journal entries then, I will recount my experiences without explicitly labeling them.

This first example serves as a framework that provides a guide to my heuristic process for the rest of my entries. Again, the creative synthesis and validation of research stages will be outlined in the coming section.

Day one and two continued with my observation that despite having come from

! 146! Alberta, where daylight lasts in spring and summer until ten PM or later, I found the brightness of the midnight sun to be challenging. I found it particularly difficult to sleep the first night; the sun never did set, and when I woke up at 4:30 AM it was well above the horizon. (During my stay I took to wrapping a black scarf around my eyes and head each night in order to fall asleep. It was sometimes effective, but I soon gave in to becoming an early riser despite my best efforts to sleep.) Since I couldn’t sleep I went out to explore with my camera early in the morning of day two. My accommodation, Hotel

Avannaa (which means Northern Greenland in Kalaallisut, the official language of

Greenland), is close to the sea and close to Hotel Arctic—a well-known four-star hotel.

The Hotel Arctic has a gift shop, two restaurants, a large patio with rocking chairs, blankets and a binocular viewing station. They also have a team of sled dogs housed at the back of the hotel, overlooking the mouth of the fjord. They are each provided with a doghouse, a water dish and are chained to a stake in the ground. They are set apart eight to ten feet from each other but can reach out towards another dog so they can sit beside one another. Only one dog was unchained, and as I soon learned, she was a mother with a dog house-full of puppies. Upon returning home, I noticed those same dogs in Tiina

Itkonen’s book (fig. 66.).

! 147! Fig. 66. Tiina Itkonen, Ilulissat 3, 2010. Itkonen, Tiina. Avannaa. Berlin: Kehrer Verlag, 2014. Print.

I learned while in Ilulissat that it is illegal to not chain a sled dog in Greenland and any dogs found roaming around town are destroyed (Ilulissat Icefjord Office 52). And that once dogs travel south of the Arctic Circle, they are never allowed back into Greenland in order to keep the dog bloodlines pure (Visit Greenland).

The reason these first observations are significant is because sled dogs are a major part of life in Ilulissat. There are almost as many dogs as people there, and you can hear them howling throughout the day. Gretel Ehrlich in her book This Cold Heaven writes about how in winter the sled dogs even have the right-of-way in traffic in Greenland (46).

Everywhere in Ilulissat—at the airport, in travel brochures, on travel websites, at the local tourist offices—visitors are reminded that the sled dogs are not pets and that they should never be approached. For example, in the Experience Kangia: Ilulissat Icefjord booklet hikers on the Old Heliport to Holms Bakke trail are warned “that the route passes through dog sites” and that “[i]t is safe to walk through, as long as you follow the markers. Do not touch the dogs, and do not feed them” (Ilulissat Icefjord Office 63). Also in the booklet it is suggested that if you feel threatened by a loose dog, you should “throw a stone after it” and if you are bitten by one you may be in danger of catching rabies (Ilulissat Icefjord

Office 52). Having not read this booklet yet, and while walking around the hotel grounds,

I ventured near to one of the dogs chained up there. I thought since they were located in plain sight beside the hotel viewing deck and right beside a tourist boardwalk trail, that I could safely go a little closer. As I approached, the dog became very excited and jumped up and lunged toward me. This dog, as they all were, was very shaggy as it was shedding

! 148! its winter fur, and it was very smelly. It was larger than any other Husky I have seen (I have a seventy-five pound Husky-mix at home) and very stocky, the image below from the Visit Greenland website shows the size of one dog compared to a woman and dog sled

(fig. 67.).

Fig. 67. Visit Greenland, Untitled. “Greenland”. Visit Greenland. N.d. Web. 25, June, 2015. .

The image below is of the dog that I had approached (fig. 68.). I learned in that moment what it meant to say that these dogs are not pets but rather working dogs. This one was not aggressive, yet neither was he friendly and submissive; he did not want to ‘shake a paw’. I did not approach another one during my stay.

! 149! Fig. 68. Kristine Thoreson, Sled Dogs Behind Hotel Arctic, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

On day one and two I also discovered that Ilulissat is far from being simply a tranquil and largely vacant place—an idea I had from looking at the stillness of the wintery-looking art photographs. Even though the art photographs by Becker, Itkonen and

Seaman were taken in a variety of seasons and locations around Greenland, I never got a sense of summer or warm temperatures from them. Winter, I know from personal experience, can be a quiet season. I have been cross-country skiing in Alberta and experienced the stillness of the forest or the frozen lakeshore far from town, with only the sound of a Chickadee and the swish of my skis to listen to. Perhaps this experience contributed to my impression of stillness in the photographs. The viewer of a photograph,

I know, brings as much to the narrative created by the image as the artist does. Yet since I arrived in Ilulissat in June, the grass was green, there was no snow on the ground and there were many sounds around the small city of Ilulissat. The Arctic Sparrow chirped endlessly, the dogs howled, the icefjord cracked, groaned and rumbled, and diesel trucks and boats motored by throughout the day. I was also astounded to hear popping or fizzing sounds along the rocky shores of the iceberg-filled water. I later learned that the glacial ice makes popping sounds as it melts in the sea water—the air bubbles in the densely packed ice escape and I noticed that the sound is similar to that of a quietly running creek

(Ilulissat Icefjord Office 20).

My first day in Greenland then was met with many new experiences and my senses were overwhelmed. My eyes hurt from the intensity of the light, the sun was shining constantly and the sky was bright blue with not a cloud in sight. It was very dry and warm when I arrived, about sixteen degrees Celsius. Yet the wind off the water felt

! 150! very cool since the bay is full of icebergs year round. These first experiences of the sounds of Ilulissat sparked an idea to record video footage and sound instead of only still photographs. I did this often over the coming week. I felt that the art photographs that I had seen were too one-dimensional, they did not relate to my experience of this hilly, noisy, urban yet rugged environment. Indeed, I had certain expectations of Ilulissat from the photographs that I had seen. What I experienced on day one and two was already very different.

Day two continued with a consideration of my experiences in Greenland thus far and of the art project that I was here to create. Taking photographs to remember a place like a tourist does, even if they are fantastic photographs, is not the same as making an art project. Lucy Lippard suggests that inviting people to see things in news ways is part of the role of an artist, and she states that artists “bring out multiple readings of places that mean different things to different people” (Lippard 19). She suggests that some successful strategies for picturing an experience of place instead of the appearance of place include juxtaposition, collage, aerial views, installation, autobiographical captions or handwritten captions (Lippard 180). These strategies attempt to bring the viewer closer to the photographer’s experience of place rather than to present a detached, framed view (Ibid).

After capturing some of the sights around Ilulissat on day one (for the purpose of remembering them as a visitor), on day two I instead spent some time considering what readings I would try to bring out through my photography.

I thought about possible readings of place other than that of the mythic North. I was inspired by Robert McGhee’s intention (in the writing of his book The Last

Imaginary Place) to write about the Arctic in a way that makes it relatable and not alien to his reader (Ibid). I too wished to create photographs of Greenland that do not present it

! 151! as otherworldly and peripheral. Lucy Lippard further suggests that when looking at art

“[t]he viewer must be encouraged to look under the surface of the images to the place’s past, to the histories we are not taught in schools” (183). This idea appealed to me, and although I was not interested specifically in countering anything I had learned in school

(in fact I don’t remember learning anything about the Arctic in school—maybe that in itself is telling), I was interested in countering the dominant motif of the mythic and sublime North. First I had to discover what kind of counter-motifs might be appropriate.

Or to discover some kind of counter-place that I could conjure with my camera and that was based on my experience.

Day Three, June 14th 2014

On day three I continued to immerse myself in the landscape of Ilulissat and the surrounding areas. I took a ten-hour return trip (one-hundred kilometer) boat journey

(plus a two hour lunch beside the glacier) that travelled North along the coast of

Greenland to visit a well-known and much visited glacier called Eqi. There are no roads outside of the cities and towns of Greenland, travel is by boat or dog sled. The tour began at seven AM and returned at seven PM, and carried twelve passengers (which was only a third of its capacity). The ocean outside of the Ilulissat harbor is filled with icebergs that have calved from the massive ice sheet in the seventy-kilometer long fjord (Ilulissat

Icefjord Office 7). From land it is difficult to judge the scale of them and to judge the distances between them. Once out on the water, navigating between and amongst them, I realized that the icebergs were in fact sometimes as large as houses and sometimes as small as a boulder (fig. 69.).

! 152!

Fig. 69. Kristine Thoreson, Tourist Photographing Iceberg from Second Story on our Tour Boat, Eqi Glacier Tour, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Amidst the icebergs are commercial fishing boats, skiffs, water taxis, other tour boats, Danish military vessels, and on certain days, cruise ships that dock in the deep

Ilulissat harbour. The icebergs are breathtaking to behold, it was amazing and exhilarating to be so close to them. Our large boat pushed through small piles of ice and small icebergs, but had to steer around the larger ones. Sea birds sat atop large and small icebergs and a variety of whale species as well as seals were known to frequent the area, though we saw none that day. Smaller skiffs followed us into the harbour on the way home, travelling was presumably much easier in the path of our wake than amidst the ice

(fig. 70.).

! 153!

Fig. 70. Kristine Thoreson, Returning to Ilulissat Harbour from Eqi Tour, Skiff in Wake, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

As we travelled north towards Eqi glacier I noticed that the icebergs were farther apart and irregular in shape and size. We learned onboard that the icebergs travel northwards along the currents as far as Thule Greenland, they then get carried West towards Baffin Island and South along the Labrador Current all the way to the shores of

Labrador and Newfoundland. The journey can take up to three years and the largest icebergs finally disperse into the Atlantic Ocean. Upon arrival at the Eqi the Danish tour guide informed us that the ice wall we were looking at was three kilometers wide and approximately one hundred meters high. Our tour boat was required to stop four hundred and fifty meters from the glacier in case a large piece calved and created a dangerous wave. As we watched and waited smaller pieces crashed into the water at the front of the glacier after a thunderous roar, and caused a travelling swell to rock the boat where we waited. In these moments of watching and hearing the ice calve (a term used to describe a chunk of ice coming free from the glacier), and reflecting upon my five-hour journey amidst the icebergs to get here, I personally understood the sublime experience that art photographers in Greenland often seek to evoke. I understood their motivation to picture

! 154! Ilulissat and other regions in Greenland in these terms. Over the course of my weeklong trip I felt, on numerous occasions, that the environment made me feel like a very small piece of a huge and living ecosystem that was indifferent to my survival.

To add to the sublime nature of the day, our diesel boat engine refused to start up again after our two-hour long lunch break beside the glacier. The engine had been turned off because it was extremely noisy, and it was difficult to hear the more subtle sounds of the glacier over top of it. Not to mention, our ears and minds needed a break from the droning and chugging sounds it continuously made. It was impossible not to notice the trepidation in the faces of our guide and our Greenlandic captain. All twelve guests on board waited in complete silence as our boat bobbed powerless, and our captain struggled to make the engine turn over. It was a sharp reminder of the real perils that we faced as

‘fair weather tourists’ in the Arctic. If our engine didn’t start, the guide explained when pressed, the next available rescue boat wouldn’t arrive in less than five hours. Depending on the currents, our boat could be in danger of drifting dangerously close to the calving glacier front. We did not have an emergency rowboat or inflatable Zodiac on board; at this point I realized that no one had even pointed out where the life jackets were. In retrospect, a life jacket wouldn’t have been of much help in the frigid water anyhow.

Happily, the engine started up again after what seemed like an eternity, yet was probably only ten minutes. On the long journey back to Ilulissat, I thought about the experience of this place, and about the art photographs I had seen. I thought about the contrast between the stunning vistas all around me against the constant roar and smoke of the boat engine. I wondered, now that I understood how powerful an experience it is to be here, what other possibilities there could be in terms of landscape photography in

Greenland? Surely, there must be other narratives, other possibilities, than the

! 155! otherworldly, sublime view or the environmentally minded documentation of the beauty and terror that is undeniable here?

What was interesting about this journey is that I experienced the fact that icebergs don’t exist alone as silent mountains of ice drifting around the ocean. Of course this is something that I already knew as general knowledge about ocean environments and natural environments as they relate to human and animal existence. Yet there was something different about looking at a photograph of an iceberg compared to touring around a bay full of them. In retrospect, the difference between understanding something from a photograph and from experience is that a photograph offers a one-dimensional way of knowing that depends on sight as well as memory or emotion. Yet through first- hand experience, a three-dimensional and enveloping way of knowing is experienced that involves sight, sound, touch, smell, peripheral vision, kinesthetic feeling as well as memory and emotion. If asked about what being around icebergs could be like before I had been to Ilulissat, I might have given a logical answer and said it was cold and awe- inspiring and that a boat may have trouble getting through the water sometimes. I may have wondered if seals and sea birds could be found near-by.

However after visiting Ilulissat and touring around the icebergs I would say that the experience is loud and noisy, that the boat sometimes knocks into the ice with a jolt and pushes its way onward. I would say that it is windy yet the air doesn’t smell salty and that the waterways are busy with fishing and hunting boats as well as tour boats and kayaks. When the icebergs creek and crack and calve, everyone pays close attention and watches for potentially lethal changes. I would say that the brightness of the ice and the sky hurt my eyes and that the iceberg ice isn’t salty; it’s pure glacial water that is too densely packed to become salty. In fact, I saw local people harvesting the ice for drinking

! 156! water (since you have to pay for trucked-in water in Ilulissat) and learned of commercial vodka production companies that harvest the ice for their distilleries such as Arctic

Velvet, Isfjord or Sïkuvodka.

I came to understand in a deeper way that icebergs exist amidst a culture of people, tourists, land and marine animals as well as industries that rely upon them. They,

I learned through experience, are not simply monolithic and isolated formations that exist as a backdrop to human activity—as majestic scenery to behold—even though they are often pictured as such. Nor are they simply exotic natural formations for tourists to enjoy.

They are one part of a large and connected ecosystem and have their own ecological trajectory that impacts and assists human, animal and environmental systems. They pose a threat to vessels in the area, the seals and polar bears travel on the ice floes and icebergs, hunters and sled dogs travel amidst them on the frozen ice floes in winter and navigate through them in open water in summer. What was happening for me, in short, was a contextualization of the Arctic landscape; I gained a new understanding through experience of what this awesome landscape was like to live within, rather than to look at.

Day Four, June 15th 2014

Day Four began with breakfast in the hotel lobby—a great assortment of breakfast items such as cold cuts, boiled eggs, bread and jam were offered. In talking with the other guests at the hotel I met a group of geologists who were about to set off for Disko Island just across the bay and visible from Ilulissat. They were from an American mining company looking for coal, I didn’t ask the name. I also learned of the TV series by

Discovery channel called Ice Cold Gold; according to the Hotel Avannaa owners the cast and crew have stayed in Ilulissat during filming. The TV series is a reality-based show that follows the efforts of a team of American miners who face environmental and

! 157! personal challenges while attempting to seek and extract gold, rubies and sapphires near

Ilulissat. I hadn’t realized that mining was an up and coming industry in Greenland.

According to the online magazine mining.com, I discovered that the Canadian company

True North Gems is set to begin construction on Greenland’s first ruby mine. Author

Cecilia Jamasmie explains in her online post titled “First Ruby and Pink Sapphire Mine

Coming Soon to Greenland” that they have been granted a thirty-year mining license and are expected to start production in SW Greenland in 2015. In a separate online article titled “Greenland Embraces Mining Rush, But Won’t ‘Favour One Country Alone’ –

Prime Minister” the same author states that “the Arctic holds over a fifth of the world’s untapped, recoverable oil and gas resources, as well as significant reserves of rare earth, coal, uranium, gold, diamonds, zinc, platinum, nickel and iron ore”. This statistic is likely to attract further international attention for Greenland; Greenland Today online magazine explains that there are already several examples of foreign ownership and co-ownership models in mining and exploration industries there today. In the article “Fine Investment

Opportunities in Greenland”, Bjartur Nolsøe (Regional Manager of BankNordik) states that “Greenland is an interesting country, investment wise. This is partly because of the on-going exploration for oil and minerals, but also because well-run companies in the

North Atlantic regions are seeking alternative markets” (Greenland Today).

According to the “Economy and Industry in Greenland” section on the

Government of Greenland website, fishing is the primary industry of their economy. The site reports that eighty-eight percent of Greenland’s exports are from fish and shellfish and two percent are from gold and olivine mining. The website also confirms that “[a]s of

2014, a handful of promising mining prospects are prepared, set to open during the next five years, making Greenland one of the most interesting mining nations in the years to

! 158! come” (Government of Greenland). Regarding tourism, the website states that travellers come to Greenland for the “beautiful, unspoiled nature” and that since the 1990s the number of tourist has risen from 3500 to approximately 35,000 annually (Ibid). A I stated in chapter one, the Ilulissat Kangia website reports that annual tourists just to Ilulissat and the Icefjord number around 20,000 annually (Ibid). I wondered after breakfast if any of the tourists, like myself, who came to Greenland to see the ice knew about the commercial fishing and mining industries here. The art photographs by Becker, Itkonen and Seaman primarily feature landscapes, and only a few images appear that indicate the presence of local industry. Seaman’s book Melting Away sometimes offers images of old mining operations and other remnants of industry, but these are shot in Svalbard, Norway and the Antarctic. In Becker’s book Broken Line there is only one photograph of rusty old barrels, lying in what appears to be a dump, which hints at industry of some kind. And with Itkonen’s book Avannaa, there is only one photograph that pictures fishing boats and men loading or unloading shipping crates. None of the photographers offer photographs of hunting or mining, and only Seaman shows photographs of tourists riding in Zodiac boats. Because they each created landscape art monographs, this is understandably since tourism and industry landscape photographs could make up an entirely new series of work. Yet there is nothing about tourism, industry or modern Greenland in any of the monograph essays. As earlier quoted passages have indicated, in fact the essays seem to purposely uphold old notions of otherworldly and sublime space.

Thus, it is important to think about these books in terms of what they don’t show in addition to what they do show. When I consider all that I have learned thus far about

Greenland, and what I have witnessed as a tourist in Ilulissat, I see that their books are very limited views of specifically chosen viewpoints. As a country that is largely seen

! 159! through pictures and not visited in person, again I see these books, and related exhibitions, as promoting a very idealized and scenic notion of place. It is apparent to me now, more than ever, how completely the genre of landscape is a constructed view.

Later on day four I paid a visit to the Ilulissat Art Museum and found a couple of excellent exhibitions. In the first room of the converted house, I found paintings of

Greenland by Emmanuel A. Petersen (1894-1948), a Danish artist who made Greenland and Ilulissat a major subject of study. His paintings depict local Greenlandic and Danish people kayaking around the bay or standing and sitting on rocky and grassy hillsides at sunset near the water’s edge. The theme of ideal Inuit life could perhaps summarize his motif and his approach to picturing Ilulissat; he published a book of his paintings in 1928 called Greenland in Pictures and many of his paintings are now also housed at the Art

Museum of Nuuk. I also found the exhibition ISI, ØJE, EYE, already discussed.

Additionally, at the Knud Rasmussen Museum of Ilulissat was an exhibition on climate change that featured photographs of local Greenlandic people accompanied by their quotes about how climate change was impacting them personally. The exhibition is titled

Breaking Ice: The Human Face of Climate Change and was created by photographer and journalist Jørgen Chemnitz of Greenland (b. 1957). The opinions expressed about climate change were varied, some preferred the recent warmer temperatures that they were experiencing, and some were unhappy because they couldn’t hunt with sled dogs as much as they used to due to a lack of ice. For example, Aksel Siegstad states:

You can no longer walk on the sea ice, but at the same time you can not sail

through it either. It is of no use now. Autumn storms have become more frequent.

Therefore it has become more difficult to catch the halibut. (Breaking Ice)

! 160! It was a valuable experience to read about local perspectives on climate change, this is something I had never seen before. The exhibition presented very personal opinions from people of all ages living in Greenland instead of general statements of global warming. I realized in that moment that everything that I’ve read or heard about regarding climate change has come from a Western perspective. I had never read about how local Arctic peoples felt about climate change and how it has impacted their lives. The following photograph is one I took of the exhibition space (fig. 71.).

Fig. 71. Kristine Thoreson, Breaking Ice, Installation View, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

These two projects were thought provoking for me, and each provided a local counter- point to the foreign-based North American and British polar expedition art and contemporary photography that I had been seeing about Greenland. Neither of the exhibitions presented a mythic or sublime notion of Greenland. Petersen’s paintings present an idyllic (that is peaceful and serene) landscape that may or may not be an accurate portrayal of daily life from his time. However, I noted that he chose not to evoke a sense of sublime awe or terror at all. Thus I feel that his choice to paint this way reflects

! 161! the attitude of someone who is familiar with the place, rather than someone who is a new visitor overwhelmed with the distinct features of the landscape.

Day Five, June 16th 2014

On day five I set out to hike the Ilulissat trail, “Power Plant to Old Heliport”, otherwise known as the ‘yellow trail’. The path was marked with yellow-coloured stakes pushed into the ground and with yellow coloured circles painted on the boulders and rocks spaced roughly ten meters apart (fig. 72.).

Fig. 72. Kristine Thoreson, Yellow Trail, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

The trail meandered along the edge of the icefjord and into the hills and rocky ground outside of town. The boulders and rocks along the icefjord were stacked up in large, naturally occurring piles amidst the hilly tail. The spring and summer bugs weren’t out yet and I was enjoying the best possible conditions. The bugs can be relentless in the

Arctic during spring and summer so I had brought a bug jacket in case I needed it; my hiking guidebook strongly recommended one from late June through to the end of

August. I saw steep rocky cliffs to my right, and just beyond the cliffs at very close range

(approximately two hundred and fifty to five hundred meters away in places) were the

! 162! densely packed icebergs that eventually get pushed out into the open water. Each time they cracked and rumbled I would whip my head around expecting to see large chunks of ice crashing into the sea. The sound was similar to what I have heard at Lake Louise in

Banff National Park when small avalanches break loose along the Plain of Six Glaciers. I saw nothing though and realized that the cracking sounds were coming from deeper within the fjord. The icefjord itself is seventy kilometers long and its depth is one thousand meters; the largest icebergs are up to two kilometers wide and rise up to one hundred and twenty meters above sea level (Ilulissat Icefjord Office 7).

Remembering that only ten to fifteen percent of the iceberg lies visible above the water, I thought to myself that this landscape really is made for polar bears—their huge paws would easily navigate this larger-than-human-scaled place (Ilulissat Icefjord Office

20). I felt a little nervous walking the trail alone; the owners at my hotel assured me that it was completely safe to do so. I left a note in my room anyway stating where I had gone and when I would be back just in case something went wrong and I didn’t return. The cracking sounds of the ice and the scale of the landscape made me nervous. Even though I like to hike at home near Calgary I felt out of my element hiking alone in Greenland. I knew that it was extremely unlikely that I would encounter a polar bear since none had come through Ilulissat in about seven years. Local people suggest that the bears don’t come to Ilulissat any more because there is not enough ice for them to travel and hunt on.

Apparently, it was seven years ago that a polar bear was seen near Ilulissat. The hunters considered their options and decided in the end to shoot the bear, since it posed a real threat to the safety of the local people. No one has seen one since. The only other animals that I might have had an encounter with according to my guide book included a small, shy

Arctic fox, an Arctic mountain hare, or a variety of birds including redpoles, ravens and

! 163! ptarmigan (Ilulissat Icefjord Office 39-42). It was a different experience to go for a hike in an environment without trees; Ilulissat sits north of the Arctic Circle and North of the tree line. I could see for many kilometers in all directions, except when a hill blocked my view. There was no protection from the sun and no smell of pine or spruce trees, as is often the case when I’m hiking at home. The hiking trail here was made of rock and deep, wet moss and unfortunately I didn’t hear or see any of the possible animals except the

Arctic Sparrow (fig. 73.). In short, on this hike I felt a little exposed, and also alone amidst the enormous landscape.

Fig. 73. Kristine Thoreson, Arctic Sparrow, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

There were a few patches of snow in shaded areas, but overall the path was just damp from the spring melt. I realized that there was less snow around Ilulissat in June than there is in the Rocky Mountains in the same month. Typically, hiking season doesn’t begin until mid June or early July in the national parks and provincial parks west of

Calgary. Lake Louise in Banff National Park usually still has ice on its surface until the first of July. This is another example of a pre-conceived notion I had, that the Arctic must be a ‘frozen’ place full of snow and ice. Yet in June (in 2014 at least) the weather was

! 164! more pleasant there, and with less snow, than in some parts of Alberta.

The day of the hike was another warm day, temperatures reached eighteen degrees and the sun was hot enough to balance the cool air coming off the water. I, and the few other tourists I passed along the trail that day, simply wore t-shirts and long sleeve light jackets. Twice during my three-hour hike the stillness and quiet atmosphere along the fjord was suddenly broken by the thumping sound of helicopters. They approached slowly and could be heard long before they could be seen. They passed low overhead and above the ice in front of me. I had my camera set up to record footage of the icefjord when the first helicopter passed by and managed to capture an audio clip of the noise. At the World of Greenland tour office I had read about one and a half hour helicopter tours that cost in excess of six hundred dollars. They offered aerial views of the icefjord along with the opportunity to stop at a land-based viewing point where participants could get out and photograph the glacier front deep inside the fjord. The tour guides were good enough to inform me when I asked that it would be difficult to photograph out the window of the helicopter because of the vibration it makes and that I wouldn’t be guaranteed a window seat on any of the air excursions. I decided not take an air tour for these reasons, and because I was enjoying my solitary explorations around Ilulissat as well as the group boat tours that I took. I decided not to explore an aerial perspective as a strategy for creating an alternative or counter narrative.

Day Six, June 17th 2014

Day six was a cloudy and cool day, thick fog had rolled in over night and the temperature fell to only five degrees Celsius. I welcomed a break from the glaring sun and booked a boat tour amidst icebergs in the bay. Once again out on the water and amidst the ice, I was again taken aback at the size of the icebergs. The water and sky

! 165! appeared grey and the icebergs were a lot easier to photograph without the sun reflecting off their angled surfaces. I took over one hundred photographs with my SLR camera and made short video clips with both my smartphone and my SLR. The seascapes that I encountered in the rain and the mist on that day were as ‘unreal’ to me as anything else I could have imagined. I noted in my journal that after the boat tour was over, I could hardly recall the details of what I had just seen. The experience of boating through kilometers of iceberg-filled water left me with such a feeling of awe that I was actually speechless. Again I was reminded that the photographs of Becker, Itkonen and Seaman were likely made under similar circumstances and as a result of similar awe-inspiring moments amidst the ice in Greenland and elsewhere in the Arctic. It really is sublime and breathtaking. Although I took endless photographs of the amazing scenes that I encountered, I did not want to exhibit them when I returned home. I wanted to present more than just this one aspect of Ilulissat, amazing as it was.

It occurred to me then also that talented as they are, the art photographers who present stunning photographs of icebergs are able to do so, not out of extreme, rare talent or laborious measures, but simply by being here. As I noted in chapter one, the most difficult part about photographing in this part of the Arctic is simply the expense in getting there. There are plenty of flights, tours, accommodations and cruises offered in

Greenland and Svalbard, Norway too. Once again, it is the business of art photography that is highlighted here. If you can catch the eye of a curator, book publisher or gallery with your work, and they can find an audience who is willing to buy prints and attend exhibitions, then you have an income to continue to support your costs. The only challenging part about photographing icebergs is the exposure, and if a photographer can do that correctly and create a pleasing composition then they too can make a series like

! 166! Olaf Otto Becker has. But you have to have the personal savings or private or public funding to get there first. Thus, even an amateur photographer (like Camille Seaman was to start with) can make stunning photographs, simply by being there. For example, who would know (if they hadn’t been to Ilulissat) that the photograph I took (see fig. 74.) could be made at a location very close to Ilulissat while standing on the deck of a tour boat?

Fig. 74. Kristine Thoreson, Iceberg from Tour Boat, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

I took it in the rain, wiping drops of water off the front of my lens with my sleeve (my lens cloth was soaked already) and with a dozen American tourists beside me. We were located not more than twenty-minutes by boat from the Ilulissat harbour and could see the shoreline for the entire time we toured around the ice in the bay.

Again I realized that the otherworldly sensibility that is evoked through photographs like this one is created through framing. The image itself is created through careful exposure and composition, but the act of cropping out the shoreline, the other tourists, the edge of the boat, the boat wake in the water and so on is deliberate. These deliberate choices are characteristic of landscape photography for both art photographers

! 167! and tourists alike. As outlined in chapter one, this example underlines the fact that to present a perfect (or near perfect) ‘window’ on the world is a long practiced convention of art, particularly in eighteenth and nineteenth century painting and photography. The next photograph I took on the same boat tour illustrates the difference that a change in framing can make (fig. 75.).

Fig. 75. Kristine Thoreson, Icebergs and Boat Deck, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

This photograph tells a completely different story and places the viewer on the deck of the boat with me instead of as a kind of omniscient eye floating in front of an iceberg. By grounding the viewer on a small boat, a touch of reality and sense of scale is inserted into the frame and reminds the viewer of the figure behind the lens.

Day Seven, June 18th 2014

Day seven was my last day in Ilulissat, the rain and fog continued and my afternoon flight was delayed three hours. At the airport some of locals joked that they were waiting for a flight on “air sometimes” instead of “Air Greenland”. It reminded me that everything here is very much dependent upon the weather. In winter the groceries

! 168! and town supplies, I was told by the Hotel Avannaa owners, come by air and the cost triples at the local grocery / supply store. In summer I was told that supplies come by boat, largely from Denmark, and they are much more affordable. I had noticed that some things were expensive: for example, a latté in town cost me about nine dollars Canadian and a Halibut burger with French Fries at the Hotel Arctic café cost me thirty dollars. It was the best fish burger I’ve ever had, but I only ordered it once due to the cost. Groceries at the local supermarket seemed to cost a little more than at home, yet I forgot to write down the prices likely because they didn’t seem that unreasonable. I recalled that food, clothing and tours had been much more expensive in Bergen and Oslo in Norway when I travelled there in 2010.

Upon leaving Ilulissat I learned of, and joined, a Facebook group called ‘I Love

Ilulissat’. Since returning home I look at it once in a while to see photographs posted by locals and tourists alike. Very often the photographs are of the icebergs and icefjord, sometimes of the snow covered city in the dark months of winter. I remember reading somewhere recently that we photograph what impresses us the most, and although I can’t recall now who wrote it, I feel that it is true. I photographed hundreds of images of the ice during my weeklong stay. Yet I also photographed the town, the dogs, the infrastructure and the Danish military ship that sailed back and forth just outside the harbour all afternoon one day. I photographed the kids playing near the water’s edge, the family harvesting ice and putting it into large silver canteens on rocks at the edge of town, the chirping Arctic Sparrows, the small cruise ship29 that silently docked at the harbour one afternoon and the fishing and hunting boats that zipped by the rocky cliffs in front of my !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 29 I didn’t notice which cruise line docked that day, however the Hurtigruten Fram ship does sail to Greenland. This ship has a capacity of 318 persons and was built in 2007. (Hurtigruten)

! 169! hotel daily.

3.4 Photographic Experimentation and Approaches

While I was in Ilulissat, I listed some approaches that I could use and the conceptual effects they could create for me (see fig. 76.).

Technique Conceptual / Visual Effect

A) Observational / Dead-pan Photography Topographical details emphasized, unemotional description, comparison is encouraged when a series is presented. Deadpan is defined as “a cool, detached and keenly sharp type of photography”… “that moves art photography outside the hyperbolic, sentimental and subjective” (Cotton 81). It became popular in the 1990s in landscape and architecture photography, Andreas Gursky (b. 1955), Ed Burtynsky (b. 1955), Candida Höffer (b. 1944) or Mette Tronvoll (b. 1965) are offered as examples in Cotton’s book (Ibid).

B) Series Photography To photograph in a series is to connect the landscapes one to another and to present more than just a single moment. Lucy Lippard suggests that in a series one image informs the next “extending the sense of presence beyond the individually framed view” (180).

! 170! C) Personal Narrative Photography To photograph personal moments including (but not limited to) such things as morning routine, daily commute, or personal / intimate interactions is to frame a subject in terms of a hyper-subjective perspective, like a visual version of a written diary. The effect is to construct an intimate narrative of ‘a day in my life’ including personal emotions, successes, or struggles for another viewer. Charlotte Cotton refers to this kind of photography as ‘intimate’ or ‘domestic’ narratives. She uses art photography by Nan Goldin (b. 1953), Mitch Epstein (b. 1952) or Elina Brotherus (b. 1972) (pp137-165) as examples. D) Aerial Art Photography An aerial image creates a flattened and unfamiliar perspective. It can turn an environment into an aesthetic abstraction. Well known aerial art photography series include Changing the Earth by Emmet Gowin (b. 1941, USA), and Black Maps by David Maisel (b. 1961, USA). E) Repeat Photography Also called re-photography, a repeat photograph is made to duplicate pre- existing photographs. It provides a ‘then’ and ‘now’ perspective and is used to invite comparison or document change. F) Staged Photography This is the practice of “setting up” a scene to photograph rather than capturing a “found” scene. A staged scene emphasizes the constructed-ness of a photograph. This is a strategy that opposes earlier thoughts about photography as a ‘truthful’ and ‘objective’ recording of fact. Jeff Wall (b. 1946, Canada) and Gregory Crewdson (b. 1962, USA) are examples.

Fig. 76. Kristine Thoreson, List of Photographic Approaches, 2015.

I made a number of short collections of photographs as part of the illumination and explication stages of research that explored specific ideas that I thought depicted alternative perspectives to the mythic sublime. As I’ve stated, I wanted to find a method

! 171! through which to depict Greenland photographically that did not uphold an established tradition of presenting spectacular, otherworldly, largely vacant or heroic space. I also wanted to continue to use photography, at least in part, if possible 30. It became challenging to try to avoid the motifs listed above since landscape photography lends itself easily to these themes. I had to continually challenge myself to try to see beyond the spectacular landscapes that I had become familiar with before I arrived in Ilulissat, and that I was in fact surrounded by once there myself. Photography is my area of expertise, and while it was difficult to critique the works of other photographic artists and then provide alternative photographic possibilities, that is what I sought to do. This insistence upon still photography also accounts for a unique contribution of knowledge in my field.

A few of Olaf Otto Becker’s photographs, discussed earlier, avoid clichéd representations of mythic space, and Janet Biggs’s video work challenge stereotypes of Arctic imagery in

Greenland. There are, as outlined at the start of chapter two, also artists working with

Arctic themed motifs that diverge from representations of the otherworldly, sublime or the peripheral and mythic North, however their images are taken in Sweden, Svalbard

Norway and Finland. My goal and challenge then, has been to work in Greenland specifically and to create still photography landscape art that presents alternative notions of place within the framework already outlined.

As a first exploration I started wondering if perhaps I was in fact the subject of my photography. As another art photography tourist in Greenland–looking to understand something about this place—I realized that I was no different than any of the previous photographers or explorers that had come before me. During this visual experimentation I !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 30 I did not, for example, want to try to create paintings or drawings of Ilulissat. These mediums can be used to create images that are not bound by the appearance of the landscape itself, as photography can be, yet I have no ability or experience in these areas.

! 172! examined more closely what I had realized: even though I’m not travelling in search of a new commercial passage, or in search of fame and wealth, I am making art photographs that I hope people will find engaging upon my return home. I am looking for a new perspective and a new way to represent this place that will help me finish my research, earn my PhD and through public exhibitions of my work become a contemporary ‘Arctic artist’. Yet when I realized how many artists (working in all mediums) have come to

Greenland through just one artist residency program for example, I realized that Arctic art is very ‘on trend’ for these times, and that I was a bit of a late-comer to the idea.

This realization unsettled me because even though I came with the purpose of

‘demystifying’ Ilulissat and Greenland through my photography, I was still coming as another foreign interloper to picture a place for the world to see after just one brief visit.

This led to the creation of a few images wherein I poke fun at myself as a tourist by photographing myself surveying of the landscape at different points during my stay. I deliberately chose to picture myself ‘looking’ at the landscape rather than to pose photographing it with my smartphone, for example. In retrospect, it might have added another layer of commentary to the photographs if I had been taking a photograph in my photograph. Yet, this kind of image seemed like it might be clichéd, and so I chose to simply picture myself ‘viewing’ the scenes before me. These photographs take up approach F) staged photography as described in the chart above as well as approach B) the series approach. I wanted to picture myself as a typical ‘viewer’ or ‘consumer’ of the landscape. As Tim Cresswell notes, most notions of ‘landscape’ position the viewer outside of it (10). These photographs emphasize the idea of photographic viewing and re- position the photographer (me) from a place outside the frame to a place inside the frame and as the subject. The titles of each image also act as a clue as to the role of the figure in

! 173! the photographs (see fig.77 through 79.).

Fig. 77. Kristine Thoreson Self-portrait as Expectant Tourist above Ilulissat Harbour, Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 78. Kristine Thoreson Self-portrait as Solo Hiker on ‘Yellow Route’ Hike, Ilulissat Greenland. 2014. Collection of the Artist.

! 174!

Fig. 79. Kristine Thoreson Self-portrait as Tourist Getting Closer to the Icebergs, Ilulissat Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

A second distinct idea that I came up with developed out of the practice of taking wide-angle views of what I saw each day, either with my SLR or my smartphone. I noticed that the landscape was so vast and treeless that sometimes I inadvertently captured very small, yet visible people in my scenes. I made a point of taking a few more photographs that featured people from a great distance and within the context of every day activities in and around Ilulissat. By including people in the photographs, a sense of scale is created and also a sense of daily life. Two women walk along a road while one carries a grocery bag, a small group of people gather on the rocks beside the water, children play near the water’s edge, and a man harvests ice on the rocks near to the Zion’s

Church (a popular location for tourists to visit), a skiff zips along the face of the icefjord, a child waits for his family on the deck of the Icy Café and a couple walk up the hill towards the center of Ilulissat (see fig. 80. through fig. 86.).

! 175!

Fig. 80. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 1, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 81. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 2, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 82. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 3, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

! 176!

Fig. 83. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 4, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 84. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 5, Ilulissat. 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 85. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 6, Ilulissat 2014. Collection of the Artist.

! 177!

Fig. 86. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 7, Ilulissat. 2014. Collection of the Artist.

The otherworldly, wintery notion of Greenland is avoided here and instead I picture the landscape wherein people go about their business in a city that sits beside the famous icefjord. The icebergs are still visible in some of the photographs but a wider view of the city in the season of spring, and as a place where people live is offered. These photographs make use of approach A) deadpan as well as approach B) series.

Likewise I made a related collection of photographs featuring the houses, buildings and infrastructure in Ilulissat. I found it interesting that the pipes all lay above ground—presumably due to the rocky ground and the cold temperatures that keep it frozen for a great deal of the time. Because it was a Danish colony, the buildings have a characteristically Scandinavian appearance in terms of colour and material. Red, blue, green, yellow and grey wooden houses and buildings, old and new, are found throughout the city. Sled dogs can be found chained up and often fast asleep in the rocky yards and grassy fields all around town. These images also use the strategy of approach A) deadpan and B) series photography (see fig. 87. through fig. 92.).

! 178!

Fig. 87. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 8, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 88. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 9, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

! 179!

Fig. 89. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 10, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 90. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 11, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 91. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 12, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

! 180!

Fig. 92. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 13, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

One further idea that I came up with once home was to blend an iceberg photograph with one of the photographs of the town and the above ground pipes. I thought it might be interesting to overlap the two images and to present an image that tells both of the ice and the urban center that lies next to it. The following photograph was the result (fig. 93.).

Fig. 93. Kristine Thoreson , Untitled 14, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

I decided not to pursue this technique. Although visually interesting it is perhaps ambiguous in meaning therefore has the potential to be understood as a critique of urban living in the Arctic. Or perhaps it could be understood as an image that is suggestive of a

! 181! conflict between Arctic nature and industry. I do not wish to engage in any conversations about the advantages and disadvantages of development in the Arctic. I feel that it is not my place, nor my area of knowledge to do so. Therefore, I did not pursue this avenue any further.

As a fourth exploration, I also made a number of photographs of the streets and street names. Thinking, as Tim Cresswell notes, that naming is one way to claim a space and make it a particular place, I thought the Greenlandic street signs provided a local context and specificity of place to the scenes I was framing (9). These photographs also offer an alternative perspective that departs from focusing on the spectacular and sublime icy seascapes. Photographs of the city’s local road signs perhaps offer the viewer an account of my experience of Ilulissat as a “user” of the roadways and facilities rather than as a “viewer” of the scenes around them. These photographs also form a series (approach

B) and are in part deadpan (approach A) in nature. The crooked road signs, the closer points of view, and the imperfect horizontal and vertical lines make these photographs more personal than the typically exacting photographs of a deadpan style.

Fig. 94. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 15, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

! 182!

Fig. 95. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 16, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 96. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 17, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 97. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 18, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

! 183! And finally, I took photographs of tourist locations that I visited including hotels, walking paths, restaurants and popular sites including the Knud Rasmussen Museum, various tour company boats and various hotels. Tourism is a significant industry in Ilulissat yet, looking at the photographs of Becker, Itkonen and Seaman though, it is difficult to understand this. There were at least five hotels in Ilulissat that I noticed, and five different tour operators as well. I know that some of the places that they have made photographs in are not as easily accessed by common tourists (like me), as Ilulissat is. And even though

Seaman made some of her photographs from aboard a tour ship (tourists on Zodiac boats are occasionally featured), I thought it might be interesting to make a series of iceberg photographs that feature tourism and tourists more prominently. The photographs look more like personal documentation rather than deadpan photographs because I chose to include what landscape photographers typically crop out of a scene to make it appear more ‘beautiful’. Things like poles, tourists, dirty dishes, shadows and so on are included in these photographs in order to provide a less scenic and more ‘as it was’ perspective.

Fig. 98. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 19, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

! 184!

Fig. 99. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 20, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 100. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 21, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 101. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 22, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

! 185!

Fig. 102. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 23, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 103. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 24, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

! 186!

Fig. 104. Kristine Thoreson, Untitled 25, Ilulissat, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

As collected data and ‘photographic sketches’ in and around Ilulissat, these photographs were the starting point for what would become my final works. These photographs can be considered as a kind of ‘documentation’ in that they show what I saw and experienced subjectively. That is to say they are not documents in any official capacity, nor do I claim that they represent what is ‘truthful’ about Ilulissat. The idea of documentary photography as an objective practice, Martha Rossler explains, dates back to early twentieth century practices of social reform and also record keeping (303). This kind of documentary photography, especially when people are being pictured, has been criticized for being, at times racist, victimizing, touristic, or sensationalist. Photographers have been accused of being exploitative in unfortunate circumstances and self-centered in terms of performing so called ‘heroic’ deeds in their photography of other people’s dire circumstances that ultimately help no-one but the photographer (Rosler 307-309).

Thus I have no interest in documenting supposed ways of life or the ‘reality’ of

Greenland compared to the ‘mythic’ photographs that other art photographers make. To

! 187! reiterate Lucy Lippard’s point quoted above, art should invite people to see things in news ways and through multiple readings of place (Ibid). For me then, it was a question of how to present new and thoughtful points of view on a much-photographed country that I found to be both modern and multifaceted.

3.5 Creative Synthesis and Validation of Research

After immersing myself in the research question on site in Greenland, I continued to reflect upon my experiences when I returned home. I made further experiments with my visual data and thought about what my final art pieces could be. I was searching for a way to make work that could weave together all that I had learned and avoid repeating popular, and tired-out motifs of the sublime. I wanted to make work that presented

Greenland as a modern place, and not an alien one. Reviewing the hundreds of photographs, videos and smartphone images that I gathered took months. At first I categorized the images chronologically and wondered if there might be some kind of additional narrative built up over time that I could identify, now that I was home.

However, I found the volume of images and the variety of images over each day to be visually overwhelming. (There are still photographs in my files one year after the trip that have not yet been ‘edited’—that is to say re-formatted from Nikon NEF files to

Adobe Photoshop PSD files and then to a smaller more versatile JPG format.) It was at this time that I decided to re-categorize the images according to theme. I made folders titled ‘houses and town’, ‘small people’ ‘me in the landscape’, ‘boats and water wake’ and so on. This proved to be very helpful because I could see more clearly the results of the different themes that I had been working around over the week (and that I have just outlined above). The photographs, for example, in the tourism section were not taken all

! 188! in one day. That series was created throughout the week after the initial idea was formed.

The same can be said of the other series that I listed.

After gathering up all of the images from the themes and photographs outlined above, I felt that the photographs did present some new and urban perspectives on

Ilulissat; however, I also felt there might be a more effective way to communicate all that

I had learned and experienced. How could I use photography to address the issues that I had identified? Over this period of illumination and explication I continued to read in preparation for the literature review presented in chapter one. It is important to note here that I did not read over one specific period of time during this research process, and then edit photographs later on. The reading of critical sources on photography, space and place theory, landscape theory, artistic methodologies, Arctic history, environmental science and art photography began before I left for Greenland and continued while there and right up until the present time.

The photography of course occurred in Greenland, and then the editing and experimentation with images and sound clips occurred from the time I came home until

February of 2015. By February, I had put together what I will call the final exploration and presentation of my visual research. Reading in conjunction to taking the photographs and later editing them provided an opportunity for me to constantly reflect upon a multitude of points. For example, I asked myself who has made what kind of art about

Greenland, and in what years? What kinds of ideas of place have been presented, by whom, and for whom? What kinds of images can I make and for whom are my images made? What notions of place will my images evoke, and for whom? And later in the process, what kinds of presentation techniques will I use, and for what purpose?

Thus, for the creative synthesis and final presentation of research, I decided upon

! 189! two strategies and two bodies of work. Moustakas defines creative synthesis as the final stage of research where the researcher is “thoroughly familiar with all the data in its major constituents, qualities, and themes as a whole” (31). At this point the researcher begins to place the core themes into a subjective and creative form such as a narrative depiction, a poem, story, drawing, painting or “some other creative form” (Moustakas

32). Meanings that emerge are tied to the researchers particular world-view and the

“connections between self, other and world” (Ibid). Thus in this research the knowledge that I create is inherently subjective.

The value in studying a problem in a subjective and heuristic research process is that personal insights can be related to broader fields of knowledge and experience.

Realizations that I made through immersion, incubation, illumination, explication and finally creative synthesis can be contextualized visually through a public presentation of my work. A public presentation opens up for conversation the notion of how, why, and for whom Greenlandic places are pictured. From these conversations new understandings, that challenge conventional or already held ideas, are possible. Through dialogue about image making, and a comparison of different kinds of subjective image making approaches, the acts of framing and directing become more visible. As I will explain, what has been taken for granted as a traditional landscape view is called into question by juxtaposing sublime and everyday moments. Thus the creation of knowledge through photographic framing becomes apparent, perhaps for the first time for some viewers.

The first body of work that I chose to make during creative synthesis uses the technique of juxtaposition and reflects the two kinds of experiences that I encountered during this research. I wanted to put together a series of diptychs that feature my spectacular photographs of the ice on the left, and my ‘urban’ or ‘peopled’ scenes on the

! 190! right. These pairings satisfy me the most out of all of the visual experiments that I made.

Because the experience of the landscape is in fact sublime and overwhelming, and because there is also so much more to the experience of Greenland and Ilulissat than just the ice, I feel that these pairings offer a more balanced perspective of Greenland than the individual photographs could. The technique of juxtaposition invites a third reading in addition to what can be understood from each individual image. The first reading comes from the left-hand image of what I considered to be sublime ice, and the feelings of awe that it evokes. I chose to use colour photographs of the ice in order to remain true to what

I saw at the time of the photograph. I first experimented with altered colours, and with black and white and sepia treatments of the photographs, however, these options rendered the scenes more ‘fictional’ or historic than was necessary for this particular synthesis of ideas. I discarded these experiments and set them aside.

The second reading comes from the depiction of an ‘everyday’ scene on the right of the diptych. These scenes are ordinary pictures of places around Ilulissat. They present a quotidian counter-point to the ‘otherworldly’ and magnificent scenes of ice. The third reading comes from viewing the work as a whole. The contrast between the sublime ice, as we’ve come to expect to see it from a multitude of art historical and contemporary sources, and the everyday scenes of life suggests that there is more to Ilulissat than awesome vistas. The title of the series, Life Amidst the Ice, Ilulissat Greenland anchors the two images together and explains the fact that the pairings are taken in or around the same place—Ilulissat. The diptychs then act as a kind of balancing scale where ahistorical motifs from visual cultural are balanced by subjective observations made at a specific point and time. The following images (Fig. 105 through Fig. 113) are what I initially put together for this series.

! 191!

Fig. 105. Kristine Thoreson, A Walk in Town- Ilulissat, Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 106. Kristine Thoreson, Skiff- Ilulissat, Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 107. Kristine Thoreson, Above the Tree line- Ilulissat, Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

! 192!

Fig. 108. Kristine Thoreson, Gone Hunting- Ilulissat, Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 109. Kristine Thoreson, At the Icy Café- Ilulissat, Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 110. Kristine Thoreson, Don’t Pet the Sled Dogs- Ilulissat, Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

! 193!

Fig. 111. Kristine Thoreson, Springtime- Ilulissat, Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 112. Kristine Thoreson, Ilulissat Hospital- Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

Fig. 113. Kristine Thoreson Ilulissat Apartments- Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

! 194! After reflecting on these pairings, I became aware of a few problems. Some of the images that I had chosen as representative of sublime were not working as I hoped they would. For example in Fig. 113. I show a piece of ice floating in the water. It is beautiful,

I realized, however not really sublime in any kind of powerful way. I realized that it was my memory of the boat tour up the coast that was sublime, and for me this image reminded me of that trip. To an outside viewer who had not experienced the trip, this image depicts only a pretty scene of blue ice and clam water. Similarly, Fig. 110 has the same problem. It was also taken on that same boat tour to Eqi, and it was the first time that I saw the sea ice frozen in that way. The photograph serves as a reminder to me of how I felt when I saw the sea begin to freeze up after travelling through open water. The resulting photograph does not evoke feelings of a sublime encounter. Fig. 108 has a different kind of problem. I feel that the scene on the left of the ice wall looks sublime, however again it is my memory of the place that is causing this feeling. There is no scale in the photograph for the viewer to understand that I was looking at a wall of ice that is hundreds of meters high. The scene on the right however does include the scale required to evoke feelings of sublime. The feelings of the powerlessness of humankind against the vastness of nature is displayed here, yet I put this photograph on the right side of the diptych where I had intended to show the ‘everyday’ experience of the people of Ilulissat.

In retrospect, this diptych works better, in terms of my intended outcome, if I reverse it.

Thus for my final presentation, Fig. 108 is reversed so that the boat appears on the right and the ice on the left. The other aforementioned images are discarded for the final presentation.

My photographs are 33 cm x 48.26 cm each (13 inches x 19 inches) unframed and presented in sets of two. They are relatively small compared with often large-scale

! 195! contemporary art photography. For example, Becker’s photograph Oquaatsut 2,

Greenland 07/2003, 69°20’18” N, 51°00’18” W is listed as being 116 cm x 138 cm (45.7 inches x 54.3 inches) in the Vanishing Landscapes catalogue (Barth n. pag.). Two more are listed as being 160 cm x 200 cm each (62.9 inches x 78.7 inches). In his monograph

Broken Line the same photograph is printed at 23.75 cm x 30 cm in size (9.4 inches x

11.8 inches) however, the exhibition print sizes are not listed. Many of the other photographs featured in Vanishing Landscapes are listed as being around or over a height of 100 cm (39.4 inches) and a length of over 120 cm (47.2 inches) including those by Ed

Burtynsky, Thomas Struth, Walter Niedermayr, Axel Hütte and Karen Apollonia Müller.

The small scale was chosen in order to avoid the spectacular presentation that typifies the work of Becker and other art photographers showing in a gallery context. A context in which commercial sales are done, where prints are created using high quality inks, limited edition runs and archival framing. As a point of interest, before gaining acceptance into galleries and museums, photographs were published primarily in magazines and newspapers. Thus, they tended to be smaller in size. Once art photography exhibitions began to be commonplace, it was possible to make photographs larger, much like the large-scale paintings already housed in galleries. Previously thought to be only for advertising and commercial photography, colour photographs were also accepted into art galleries and museums during this period31. My choice to print small photographs does not however relate directly to this historical shift. It does relate though to the idea that smaller photographs require closer attention by the viewer. In order to see what my

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 31 Charlotte Cotton explains that art photographers such as Stephen Shore (b. 1947, USA) and William Eggleston (b. 1939, USA) worked to establish colour photography as the norm over black and white photography in the 1970s; it wasn’t until the 1990s that colour became the “staple of photographic practice” (12-13).

! 196! photographs have to offer, a viewer must approach at a close range and look around the image. As opposed to large photographs that capture the viewer’s attention from across a room, small-scale photographs do not try to create a sense of scale that matches or overwhelms the size of the viewer. Rather they create a more intimate and personal relationship that requires a viewer to come close and look carefully rather than to take in a scene in a single glance. In order to see the details in these images, a viewer must invest some time and energy to physically walk up to them and actively look. They are not made to ‘decorate’ a room and impress from a distance as perhaps large-scale iceberg photographs can. My diptychs are made to encourage reflection and comparison, and not primarily aesthetic appreciation, although I think they are that too.

The second body of work that expresses an alternative presentation to the mythic

North is a set of two photographs of icefjord scenes that are each accompanied by an audio clip. The first audio clip features sounds of the community near my accommodation—the Hotel Avannaa From the deck that extended in front of my room and overlooked the waterfront, I made a three minute and thirty-six second recording of the sounds of the neighbourhood; a teenager stomps along the road in front of my room, children are laughing and talking across the street, diesel work trucks clang and rumble down the street where construction is underway, and Arctic sparrows chirp from their near-by perches atop the rocks and buildings (see fig. 114.).

! 197!

Fig. 114. Kristine Thoreson, Ilulissat Icefjord 1 with Audio Clip, Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

The photograph of the icefjord behind the houses and the Hvide Falk Hotel (in blue) is, of course, silent. Whether a viewer imagines any sounds in conjunction with an image is impossible to know. I only know that I imagined the sound of wind and perhaps water lapping at the ice when viewing iceberg photographs before my visit to Greenland. Yet I found that often during my excursions around Greenland I found the everyday noises of the boat, the tourists, the town, or the helicopters to be incongruous with my visual experience of ‘otherworldliness’. It was almost humorous to be standing there on the deck of a boat, the shores of the town, or the porch of my hotel, taking in all of the grandeur of the icefjord only to be distracted by the sound of shouting children, boat engines, helicopters and tourists speaking in foreign languages.

The second photograph and the accompanying one minute and twelve second recording were made while I was on the ‘yellow’ hiking trail described earlier and feature the sudden interruption of the noise of a helicopter. The helicopter sound bursts into the otherwise placid scene without warning and gets louder and louder until it passes overhead and then begins to fade away (see fig. 115.).

! 198!

Fig. 115. Kristine Thoreson, Ilulissat Icefjord 2, with Audio Clip, Greenland, 2014. Collection of the Artist.

The experience of place that these pieces relate is based again on the comparison of my expectations with my experience. Firstly I found that the sights I was beholding were awe-inspiring, and as I stated I was often left speechless. Secondly, the noisy interruptions of my ice-filled reveries were so unexpected that I sometimes found myself turning around to see who or what was making the noise. It was almost as if an unspoken rule of etiquette had been broken and someone in an audience had spoken too loudly during a ceremony or driven a vehicle without a muffler through the middle of a grave- side funeral service. Shhhh, I wanted to say, I am watching the ‘show’.

Indeed the art photographs of Becker, Itkonen and Seaman seem to present a performance—a theatre of ice. My still photographs that are accompanied by sound clips taken very near (but not exactly) to where the photographs were made self-consciously interrupt the photographic dramatizations of the ice. For that is what these photographs are, they are dramatizations of place that show a viewer an idea of the Arctic. Absent from the photographs are the photographer, the other tourists at my hotel or along the

! 199! hiking trail, the litter along the roadsides, the smell of the diesel engines and so on.

Through the addition of everyday sounds, the viewer is reminded of, or perhaps newly introduced to, the context from which the images have come. What is more, the audio clips break the silence that typically accompanies the viewing of artwork. There is no room for quiet contemplation here, rather the audio clips snap the viewer into the present moment and requires his or her attention.

The diptychs and audio / image pairings are intended for a general audience without specific knowledge or experience of Greenland or Ilulissat. It is for the viewer with a casual interest in Arctic landscapes, icebergs, Arctic tourism or narratives of the

North. It is my intention that through the contrasts presented and the titles offered that the

‘every-day’ photographs and sounds of Ilulissat will challenge the commonplace notion of a ‘mythic North’. That this Arctic region will be understood as a relatable, modern and less foreign space than may have been previously imagined is the goal.

3.6 Conclusion

Growing concern over climate change, together with the ability to travel more easily than even before to the Arctic, has resulted in a proliferation of exhibitions, books, essays and reviews that feature Arctic landscapes by art photographers. Olaf Otto Becker examines the effects of Nordic light in his series Broken Line, and recalls Victorian motifs of sublime and awesome nature. Camille Seaman, through her photography of

Polar Regions, encourages viewers to be aware of climate change and to be a “good ancestor” by taking care of the earth before it’s too late (Ibid). And Tiina Itkonen fell in love with a Northern culture of Inuit people and beautifully photographs their environment and culture. They are a people, and the Arctic is a place, to which she has

! 200! become deeply attached. However as each of these photographers now move on to new subjects and new areas of interest, what is left behind is an accretion of perceptions that are specific to time and place and commercial interest.

It is true though that I could, just as easily as other art photographers, have simply presented a series of sublime iceberg photographs from my visit to Ilulissat. And there were moments where I did feel very small and insignificant in such a vast and unforgiving environment. Such a presentation of imagery then would not have been incongruent with my experience. Yet that was only one component of my experience, there were many other moments, impressions and feelings that I had and many other interpretations that I could make. The challenge for me then, as an artist in Greenland, was to understand where the popular and repeating motifs of a sublime wonderland were coming come from; what other representations of the Arctic (and Greenland specifically) were being made and; within this spectrum, what kind of images of Greenland I would make—and why.

Situated within the fields of contemporary art and cultural geography this project, in addition to offering new artistic outcomes, critically contextualizes existing

Greenlandic iceberg and inland ice photographs. Imagery by Becker, Seaman and Itkonen are outlined as complex cultural signifiers that suggest (or re-suggest) particular, limited points of view. Tied to this limited point of view, and in part the cause of it is the public and commercial environment of art photography that includes artist statements, catalogue essays, book sales, print sales and art reviews that frame the art work in specific ways.

My critique, and artistic response, to these problems are presented in opposition to the existing published accounts that position Becker, Seaman and Itkonen’s works within established aesthetic and environmental awareness contexts. With my work I picture

! 201! everyday kinds of places and present them alongside sublime iceberg images, in order to juxtapose the sublime with the quotidian experience that I had while visiting Greenland.

And I offer a combination of stunning photographs with sound recordings in order to require viewers to consider the modern experience, and not the Victorian one, of travelling in Greenland. This research focuses on theoretical perspectives surrounding the reception of images at a cultural level through major, professional presentation channels.

It does not explore individual or actual responses to identified works of art. Neither does it include an examination of amateur or adventure photography that is done in the Arctic.

What has been largely unaddressed, until now, is the impact photographs by widely published art photographers can have on local and global perceptions of Arctic places, specifically Greenland. Furthermore, there has been a lack of photographic engagement and curatorial interest with motifs other than the sublime, in Greenland.

While one video artist working in Greenland has successfully created a critical and thought-provoking piece about myths of Greenlandic travel, and Olaf Otto Becker has created a few images that depict scientific research (still within a sublime aesthetic) and tourism, no other comparable work (to my knowledge) in still photography of Greenland exists apart from my own. Dynamic works by Johnson, Puranen and Tunbjörk in Norway,

Finland and Sweden have been made; however, these photographs have not been as publically available as the work of Becker, Seaman and Itkonen. Neither have they received similar amounts of attention in the popular press. Julie Decker presents a much needed range of perspectives on the Arctic in art in True North: Contemporary Art of the

Circumpolar North, yet even within this forward-looking project only two photographs that picture Greenland in non-sublime motifs are included. Thus, a handful of photographic artists and curators are starting to present alternative perspectives to the

! 202! popular sublime motifs, yet their works are as yet unproven in a commercial sense and have not yet been included as extensively as the others in exhibition, book and popular press reviews. The exhibition Breaking Ice by Jørgen Chemniz toured to Croatia in 2013 after opening in Greenland, but t has not appeared anywhere else to my knowledge.

What is needed now then, for artists, museums, galleries and book-publishers, is to begin to circulate work that explores more diverse perspectives. It is still possible to attract viewers through the popular sublime aesthetic. As I have shown with my own artistic work, all that is needed is to add more than just ‘contemplative’ scenes to the visual conversation. There are lesser-known artists and curators who are already working to reflect critically upon representational practices of Northern based art. And there are local, Northern perspectives starting to be told, as with the Greenlandic photography exhibition ISI, ØJE, EYE.

Thus, I envision my next project as a curatorial one that will contribute to this developing area of artistic and curatorial interest. I plan to investigate more closely Inuit art and Nordic paintings from the 1800s and the years of polar exploration to now. I suspect that, if I travel to local Arctic museums, I will find further examples of art and painting that present the Arctic as a homeland, and not a terrific, wild space. I would like to research these works, and the artists, and use this knowledge as a jumping off point for a North American exhibition of alternative, contemporary and locally made Arctic art. By locally-made I mean to include art by those living in the eight Arctic nations that include

Greenland, Northern Canada, Finland and Norway and well as Russia, Northern USA,

Iceland and Sweden. By researching and presenting further examples of an alternative art history (to the popular Anglo-Saxon sublime), I can re-frame dominant contemporary art discussions. I can show, through art, that the North has always been a local place to many

! 203! in addition to being a peripheral one to others. This is a different perspective from current exhibitions that present contemporary and non-sublime works about the Arctic as ‘new’ and dynamic. While they may be dynamic and important works, I know that there have always been artists who have made work about their homes in the Arctic. Thus, with this exhibition, I will continue the work of Robert McGhee and work to present the individual nations of the Arctic as a non-alien and relatable places (Ibid).

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