“Where the world is melting”: Ragnar Axelsson's photographs show the consequences of climate change for the Arctic

Created: 12/22/2021, 09:35 AM

From: Cornelia Schramm

Ragnar Axelsson gives a face to climate change through his photographs of humans and animals.

("Sled Dog, Thule, Greenland 1987").

© Ragnar Axelsson / Where the World is melting

The Icelandic photographer Ragnar Axelsson has been traveling through his home country, Greenland and the whole Arctic for 40 years.

His pictures document climate change subtly, but with reverberation.

Now he is exhibiting in Munich.

His eyebrows are frozen in the freezing cold: Mads Ole stands there as if blown from time, her clothes and boots made of fur.

As an Inuit hunter, the indigenous people of Greenland, he holds a spear in his hand.

Huge structures of snow and ice tower up behind him.

They seem unreal, almost dead - but in the end they are alive.

It's a spectacular scene that Icelandic photographer Ragnar Axelsson captured in 2019.

And for those “moments”, as he calls them, the 63-year-old has been traveling through Iceland, the Arctic and Greenland for 40 years.

His photographs document the melting of the eternal ice - and the people who have this catastrophe in front of their eyes every day.

In the exhibition “Where the World is melting” he is now showing his pictures in the art foyer of the Bavarian Insurance Chamber in Munich.

The variety of motifs is surprising.

In those unfriendly territories there is not only snow and ice, Axelsson seems to want to exclaim.

Only a few photographs show icebergs or glaciers.

And even they often come across as human at Axelsson: for example the Öræfajökull glacier, from which a giant is said to have awakened from its sleep centuries ago and has since been staring menacingly up into the sky.

“Where the World is melting” shows climate change in a subtle - but moving way

In addition to coarse-grained shots of snowstorms that bury entire villages under themselves, the photographer gives sometimes unadorned insights into people's everyday lives.

Children, farmers, hunters and fishermen: Axelsson portrays them sensitively and unfiltered.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the consistent black and white look, it feels like you are grasping the hunter's Mads Ole by the fur collar or tracing the deep wrinkles of a woman from Tasiusaq with your own fingers.

Greenland or a surreal moonscape?

Axelsson's photography "Mads Ole Hunter, Thule, Greenland 2019".

© Ragnar Axelsson / Where the World is melting

Axelsson plays with light and shadow, the shapes made of ice and stone and with the contrast between extreme nature and human adaptability.

In the Siberian tundra, for example, it is already struggling with temperature differences of up to 100 degrees Celsius.

Ragnar Axelsson: Photographs of people, caves and the white giants

While walking through the exhibition, which consists of the series “Faces of the North”, “Last Days of the Arctic”, “Heroes of the Arctic” and “Glacier”, Axelsson constantly turns the focus control. So authentic that a crippled tree becomes a work of art. The infinite white is merciless, but by no means barren. “A sled dog is your best friend here,” says Axelsson, who calls many Arctic residents friends and knows their stories and fears about the future. "The big ice cream is doing badly", the Inuit are sure of that.

Ragnar Axelsson shows the ice caves of Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Europe, as a subtle, deeply moving finale. Suddenly enigmatic reliefs, even grotesque faces, emerge from the photographs: weeping women, a suffering Christ and a judging God? "The patterns in the landscape are endless," says Axelsson and warns: "Scientists assume that the glaciers of Iceland will have disappeared in 150 to 200 years." And without the white giants, which he captures both mystically and realistically, the Planet warm up, the earth rise and shake even more frequently. And that concerns us all.

Until March 13, 2022,