The Man Who Walks the Ice: An interview with photographer Ragnar Axelsson

 Photo by Ragnar Axelsson

Recently, I interviewed the great Icelandic photographer Ragnar Axelsson. The story is called “The Man Who Walks the Ice” and it was published on The Photographic Index, a newly launched site I think you’ll like. Axelsson has been working in the most remote regions of the Arctic for decades, documenting the effects of our changing climate on the environment and on the people who live there. In our conversation, Axelsson talks about his influences (Eugene Smith), what it’s like to spend weeks out on the ice, the challenges he faces with his equipment, and the most important less he learned from Mary Ellen Mark.

The story starts like this; click the link at the bottom of this post to read the entire interview

I first came across Ragnar Axelsson’s pictures when—and I will not soft-pedal this—I was properly drunk. My oldest friend had taken me to Reykjavik to celebrate my 40th birthday and celebrating we were. Tumbling out of a bar and into the ethereal post-midnight glow of the Icelandic summer, we lurched toward a public park in order to … I’m not sure what. But in that park, as part of a public art exhibit, there was a series of oversize photographs, and among them, a face, a face that had seen things, the face of Father Time — shrouded in mist and sea foam — somehow walking among us. My friend and I stopped our slurring and stumbling and just stood there. We could not look away.  

Over the years, as I became more aware of Axelsson’s work, I learned that it was widely celebrated for its sweeping beauty, for its drama and intimacy, but also for its early and tireless attention to the effects of our changing climate on the glaciers of Greenland. But on that drunken night in the park, I saw something else: an emotional landscape. The topography of loneliness, of rugged self-sufficiency, of an ancient relationship between man and the sea.

To read the rest of the story, click here.