What attracts visitors to the high Arctic and what do they feel when they are in such a landscape? Each photograph contains a story of participants of the Arctic Circle residency – sculptures, painters, writers and photographers – who reflect on their experience of the expedition. The stories are about the fragility of the landscape, loneliness, uncertainty, awe and beauty. Climate change is the common factor in all these accounts, with each individual making sense of it in their own way, giving an emotional mapping of the environment. Read about how the emotion of the landscape grabs them, and what it means to enter in to a dialogue with such a deserted place.
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Witnessing the raw beauty affects one’s attitude back home
Getting educated on climate change is necessary
Visiting extreme desolate environments to match feelings of loneliness
Being in the sublime
Storytelling changing powerlessness into power
Tourists help to clean up polluted beaches
Being in the landscape feels stunning and horrifying
The landscape makes me feel like a human being
That damned white Arctic killed my time
From the highlands in Scotland to the layered mountains in Spitsbergen
Being on the top of the world
Being in the high Arctic is like being in a drawing
Everybody get seasick, it just depends when. Captains get seasick. And witches
Careful with water
Former whaling station Smeerenburg is one of the most documented spots in Dutch paintings