In autumn (northern hemisphere) 2011, a Reuters photographer spent a few days at a research station built on Arctic sea ice north of Alaska, and documented his time there. Despite the remote location the pictures (to me at least) portray a hive of activity and industry. The landscape of the Arctic does not seem as forbidding and remote as the Antarctic one described by Gavin in Empire Antarctica and the authors of these two articles and seen here – perhaps because it is actually much closer to civilisation and certain parts of it are inhabited by indigenous peoples. The scale seems more human, the light seems gentler, and the dimensions of the landscape seem less terrifying than the Antarctic’s bleak and endless whiteness. (This may be partly by choice of the photographer.)
The photographer wrote a blog post about his trip which is an excellent accompaniment to the photographs:
Who wouldn’t like to go to the Arctic, sleep in a plywood hutch, and go underneath the ice in a nuclear submarine?
You can see the images here and read the article about the trip here. There are even pictures of a submarine surfacing through the ice (on purpose)!
