When National Geographic photographer James Balog asked, “How can one take a picture of climate change?” his attention was immediately drawn to ice. Soon he was asked to do a cover story on glaciers that became the most popular and well-read piece in the magazine during the last five years. But for Balog, that story marked the beginning of a much larger and longer-term project that would reach epic proportions.
In summer 2003, when the heatwave hit in Europe, in Switzerland, the glacier below the Schnidejoch pass, released a mysterious object: a piece of a Neolithic quiver.
A Tasmanian tiger wanders around in his zoo enclosure. A glacier is slowly melting. Facing its predicted disappearance, nature exerts its fury, bursts over the frame and resists its extinction by transformation.
The Kalaallit people of Greenland have been intimately connected to the eternal ice for millennia. These massive glaciers stand as records of ancient eras of the planet – but recently they began disappearing. As the foundation of their traditions literally melts beneath their feet, members of the Kalaallit community work with artists to capture the images and stories of a vanishing landscape and way of life.
Excelsior, a ski-resort without snow. A missing bride-to-be, a course for men in search of meaning, a couple in crisis, a Carnival monster, marmot hunters and a glacier in peril: the uncertain future of an Alpine community hinges on its ability to face up to its contradictions when everything collapses.
