Above Zero

Have you always had this interest in the planet?

When I was young I saw it as a gift to be here on the planet. I wondered what was before I was born and what will be when I disappear in the future. I thought about the short time I would live on Earth and I was interested in understanding the planet we live on. So, all my ideas and projects are about our generation on Earth now. That is what I am curious about and have always been curious about.

I would like to ask you about the production in Greenland. How did you manage to shoot that? Did you use a snow scooter or a boat or how did you do it?

It was much more difficult than that. Before I decided to go on the ice I did a lot of research. I spoke to people who had previously crossed from east to west or from north to south of Greenland. Most would go in March and April. At this time the entire icecap is covered in snow and there is enough daylight to go on trips for many hours a day. And most importantly, the icecap is almost flat because of the snow.

Many people warned me not to go in the summer. It would be very rocky, there would be rivers and crevasses that you wouldn’t be able to cross. There would be ice swamps and it would be almost impossible to walk longer distances at this time. But that was what I wanted to experience, and I decided to go during the summer.

To get permission for an expedition you need to be two people for safety reasons. I contacted an adventure guy, Georg, and we took on the first expedition in the summer of 2007.

We took a boat to a glacier where an ice tongue went directly into the sea. From there we went over a mountain and walked for about 20 kilometres to reach the edge of the ice cap. We had around 180 kilos of equipment and we carried everything over the mountain ourselves. When we reached the edge, we put everything on pulk sleds and we each had 90 kilos to carry. We walked across the ice in the direction where we expected to find the rivers. A year earlier, I had received satellite images with coordinates from scientists at a university in Colorado, from this specific area. In these pictures, I could see where the rivers and lakes were located.

We walked for about four weeks on the ice to find these rivers and to photograph them. But it was so strenuous to walk there that I had lost 16 kilos of weight and I was only able to take photographs of one river. It was such a demanding experience that I had never had before.

I later decided to go back and do a second expedition in 2008 for two months. It would probably have been easier to hire a helicopter and find the rivers and crevasses that way, but I needed to feel the landscape myself and to stay there for a while so as not take the easy way out. For me as a landscape photographer, it is necessary to experience the landscape myself at close range to fully understand the landscapes that I am photographing. It is a very different feeling to be there for a longer period because you have the physical experience of walking on the ice, you experience all weather conditions, and you can make a lot of observations. You wouldn’t be able to do that if you were only there for two or three days or in a helicopter.

Do you think there is hope for the future of the planet?

Will future generations be able to live with the consequences of climate change? Yes and they will probably also be happy. Things are changing over generations, so the next generation will not know what generations before already lost because it’s not there anymore. They are born with a new starting point of happiness. Through time a lot of things will change, and they will also lose and grieve. And the next generation again will have another starting point. In the future it might be normal to live in a desert. Future generations will need to adapt to a new environment and find meaning in the world they live in.

I hope that we will keep and protect our primary forest. But I don’t believe that will happen. I think it will disappear and that makes me very sad. Global warming is already happening, and we cannot avoid it in the future. There is organic carbon – from plants and animals – stored in permafrost, and when the permafrost thaws, the microbial processes frozen in time will start. The material will release greenhouse gases such as methane into the atmosphere. This is inevitable and it will accelerate climate change even more. All sorts of processes are happening on the planet now and I don’t think they can be stopped anymore. We will have to live with the consequences.

We will have to find another way to live on this planet. Overconsumption is our safety net, but it is also our downfall. We must reduce our consumption of everything and we need to question what we need and what we don’t need.

I also think that we need to select areas on Earth where humans should not have access – areas where nature can grow freely and develop in a natural way. We need to find solutions that can help balance the planet. What is really important to me is that we show respect – not just for the people we meet, but for nature and animals. Respect is listening and observing without leaving traces.