A YEAR LONG PHOTOGRAPHIC SURVEY OF ALASKA FOR WILDLIFE CONSERVATION & CULTURAL PRESERVATION
The Great Alaska Project is a year-long documentary and fine art photography project designed to create a comprehensive visual record of Alaska at a critical moment in its ecological and cultural history . Spurred by the accelerating effects of climate change and the recent opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, this project will create a large body of photographs that will function both as a work of fine art and as a catalyst for wilderness conservation & cultural preservation.
The project will engage the power of photography — as it has from Carleton Watkins to Ansel Adams to Sebastião Salgado — to forge an emotional connection to a threatened landscape and its people. Photography can move the needle towards policy change, towards wilderness conservation, and towards cultural preservation.
The mission is the creation of a museum quality exhibition, a large format book, and a public digital archive for educational & research purposes that will underscore the need to protect a fragile and far removed corner of our country.
ALASKA: FRONTLINE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE
Alaska stands at a fragile moment in its history. The last great American frontier — home to Indigenous peoples who have lived in harmony with this land since the dawn of time, to the fishermen who have plied its waters for generations, to the caribou herds and polar bears that roam its vast forests and plains — is warming faster than any other state in the nation. The effects of climate change are no longer distant or abstract. Ancient glaciers are retreating at alarming rates. Permafrost is thawing beneath the villages of communities who never asked for this and did least to cause it. Rising seas are eroding coastlines that families have called home for centuries.
The Great Alaska Project was born out of worry for what is being lost — and the belief that photography, more than any graph or data point, can makes us feel this loss on a visceral level. By documenting Alaska across all four seasons — its landscapes, its wildlife, and the faces & traditions of its people — this project seeks to bear witness to a mighty frontier that deserves to be seen, understood, and protected before it is changed forever.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The year long project will occur over four seasonal field sessions totaling 20 weeks in the field documenting both the landscape and the human communities whose lives are shaped by it.
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The project employs an immersive, seasonal approach with four sessions of field work in Alaska over the course of one year. Each phase will last 4 to 6 weeks allowing for deep engagement with locations and communities. The structure is designed to allow the time to build trust & understanding necessary for in-depth documentary work.
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This project will capture the shear scale, breadth, and stunning beauty of the state ... from the mountains of the Brooks Range to the glacial bays of the Inside Passage to the tundra of the North Slope.
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Subjects to include the Inuit communities such as the Inupiat & Gwich’In people whose culture is tied to the caribou of the North Slope as well as the commercial & subsistence fishing industries; these groups survival will be impacted by a warming climate.
SUPPORTING THE PROJECT
The Great Alaska Project requires financial support because the work it demands — and the scale at which it must be done — cannot be accomplished without significant resources.
Twenty weeks of fieldwork across one of the most remote and logistically challenging landscapes on Earth requires bush flights into roadless wilderness, ferry passages and boats to, as well as guides & Indigenous consultants who can open doors that no outsider can open alone. This is not a project that can be executed from a distance or on a modest budget — it requires full immersion across four seasons, in conditions that range from the frozen Arctic winter to the midnight sun of the Alaskan summer.
Every dimension of this project is in service of a public good: a permanent visual record of a place and a people that is vanishing. That is precisely why it depends on the generosity of those who understand what is at stake.
Contributions can be made directly through the link above.
If you are interested in more information about the project, please inquire at klein@joshuatreestudio.com