Canadian soldiers build igloos as a improvised survival shelter at the Crystal City training facility, Resolute Bay, Nunavut, Canada in temperatures as low as minus 50 degrees Celsius (-58 F). Photo by © Louie Palu

The Reva and David Logan Gallery of Documentary Photography cordially invites you to the opening reception for “Distant Early Warning: The Arctic Under Siege” | Photographs by Louie Palu.

In 2007, a Russian submarine planted a flag under the North Pole, beginning what has become known as a New Cold War. Part of the security narrative is driven by the idea that once the ice melts, natural resources like oil and new shipping routes will become part of a new northern economy. The result is that many countries that desire natural resources or new economic opportunities want to stake claims on this final geographic frontier on our planet.

The images in the exhibit, named for the radar line stretching from Alaska to Greenland, began as a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2015 and evolved into an assignment for National Geographic Magazine. The pictures examine the growing geopolitical tensions and changing life for indigenous Inuit people with roles and responsibilities in the management of their lands and waters amidst the warming of the planet.

Palu has made over 40 trips to the Arctic since the early 1990’s, resulting in over 200,000 photographs, documenting the transformations taking place in this vast and isolated region.

For me, the Arctic is about the unknown and our imaginations. It’s often understood in the South through a map, cliché images of ice, animals, outdated stereotypes of indigenous people or scientific statistics. But it can also be a blank slate for invented narratives that suit people’s fantasies of what they want the Arctic to be. I’d like to challenge people’s perceptions and provoke a shift in consciousness, to produce work that makes us ask questions about a critically important part of our planet that will reshape our environment and what our ideas and strategies of security are in the face of a warming planet that will affect us all.
–Louie Palu

Read about the project and Palu’s challenges photographing in the Arctic, in GUP Magazine (The Netherlands):

In the high Arctic, if you are on the land and your snowmobile goes through the ice, you need to remain calm, know how to recover yourself and/or the people you are with or you could die…
batteries die quickly, for which I carry 10 inside my parka, the vapor from your breathing can form ice on the back of your camera and all over your face. In some cases my eyelashes have frozen together, and on one trip I scratched my cornea wiping ice away from my eye, forcing me to wear an eye patch and use my non-photo eye to see and work with.

Reception
6:00-7:00 p.m.

Professor Ken Light in conversation with photographer Louie Palu
7:00-8:30 p.m.

Portrait of photographer Louie Palu
Image: © Chloe Coleman

About Louie Palu

Louie Palu (b. 1968, Toronto) is a photographer and filmmaker whose work has examined social political issues. He is best known for hybrid approaches to creating work that incorporates art and documentary. Palu’s photographs have been selected for a Guggenheim Fellowship and World Press Photo Award, and appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, PBS NewsHour, Der Spiegel, El Pais, TIME Magazine, Newsweek, The Atlantic, NPR, CBC, The Globe and Mail and Sunday Times Magazine. His films have been screened at many festivals, including Hot Docs and the Munich Documentary Film Festival. His work is held and has been exhibited in numerous collections including the Smithsonian, U.S. Library of Congress, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, National Gallery of Canada and the National Gallery of Art. He is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design and holds an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.