Tales Beneath the Melting Ice
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Author
I am fascinated by people who live in remote conditons; whether it be physical orpsychological.
I am fascinated by people who live in remote conditons; whether it be physical or
psychological. It was this fascinaton that first took me to Pyramiden, Svalbard in the
Norwegian Arctic Territory. Pyramiden is a utopian coal-mining town, a landscape-scale
“museum” of soviet-style industrial heritage, bought by Russian state company
Trust Arktikugol in 1927. Though landscapes and portraits, I captured on my first trip
the fragmented remains of a communist dream. The mine closed in 1998 and the
site is now reused for global warming research, alongside historical and polar
tourism. Tales Beneath The Melting Ice documents how this utopian dream coexists
with a newer version of itself, becoming both a tourist attraction and a climate
change research site. I’m interested in documenting the artificiality of the spectacle
created around Soviet industrial history in pristine Arctic and the effects of human
disregard for the planet. I’ll use the grant to return and continue the work I began
(htp://bit.ly/1DABb1V). Through landscape, portrait and scientifc photography, 6x7
format, I’ll complete the series, turn it into a book.
Pyramiden is a unique village, a real-life time-machine that illustrates the untenable
nature of communism. It’s all that remains of a forgotten and failed utopia. But it is,
as well, an A to Z guide on the dreadful consequences of our negligent production
system and its effects on global warming. Boats full of tourists, hungry to see glaciers
before they melt, travel to this environment, a place that is remote from human life
yet disproportionally affected by its activity. Tourism sites are often a staged and
purified version of themselves showing a neat and fragmented reality. Pyramiden is
like a safari in the Arctic. This unconventional “show”, where science, history and
feeting nature meet, is what I aim to document.