Ragnar Axelsson’s thawing vision of Arctic life

At the Edge of the World — For over four decades, the Icelandic photographer has been journeying to the tip of the earth and documenting its communities. A new exhibition dives into his archive.

For pho­tog­ra­ph­er Rag­nar Axels­son, jump­ing from ice­berg to ice­berg and bear­ing frigid air is the easy part. It’s cap­tur­ing the untold sto­ries of hunt­ing com­mu­ni­ties in remote land­scapes that is the real under­tak­ing. You start think­ing dif­fer­ent­ly about the world when you see how hard oth­er peo­ple have it,” he says. I pho­to­graph these places because I need to show how tough it real­ly is.”

Axels­son is one of the small hand­ful of pho­tog­ra­phers trav­el­ling to the Arc­tic and doc­u­ment­ing its cli­mate. As a young pho­to­jour­nal­ist in Ice­land, he left his news­pa­per to trav­el to Africa after see­ing its coun­tries face eco­nom­ic strug­gle and war on the news. When you’re young, you want to go and do some­thing inter­est­ing,” says Axels­son. I saw there were prob­lems in Africa so I decid­ed to go there and take pho­tos. But once I was there, I realised that every pho­tog­ra­ph­er in the world was there tak­ing the same pictures.”

He turned his atten­tion to the Arc­tic. When he was younger, he had learnt how to fly in hopes of becom­ing a pilot. He began fly­ing to the neigh­bour­ing coun­try of Green­land to col­lect hours for his license. Even then, dur­ing one of his trips in the win­ter of 1980, he rev­elled in the icy cli­mate before think­ing this is going to change dras­ti­cal­ly in the com­ing years”.

His first jour­ney to Green­land with his cam­era was in 1986, the first of four decades of Arc­tic pho­tog­ra­phy now com­piled into Axelsson’s exhi­bi­tion, At the Edge of the World, on dis­play at The Pho­tog­ra­phers Gallery in Lon­don until Jan­u­ary 26. A firm believ­er that the Arctic’s cli­mate will be a press­ing issue in the com­ing years, he says his art is to show peo­ple how life there real­ly is”.

Top to bottom: Scoresbysund, Greenland, 2019 Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery Hele-Bobb in Northern Lights, Tiniteqilaaq, Greenland, 1997 Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery Mýrdalssandur, Iceland, 2016 Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery

It’s not easy to pho­to­graph the Arc­tic,” he says. You are pho­tograph­ing in the cold­est of con­di­tions, and you have to try to get that cold­ness into the photo.”

The series con­veys the effects of cli­mate change on remote lands and their inhab­i­tants. Its black-and-white pho­tographs are harsh, bar­ren and yearn­ing – del­i­cate­ly reveal­ing a region in tran­si­tion. From a man stand­ing on sea ice in 1980s Green­land to a child in Siberia near a camp­ground in 2016, his images give an inti­mate look into the Arctic’s past, present, and uncer­tain future.

Axels­son recounts a time when he had first begun doc­u­ment­ing and speak­ing to the com­mu­ni­ties, and he passed by an elder­ly man in Qaanaaq, Green­land. With the help of Axelsson’s trans­la­tor, the man explained that some­thing was wrong and that their world was slow­ly changing.

These peo­ple are a part of nature and so they sense things in a dif­fer­ent way from most oth­er peo­ple,” he says. My focus from the very begin­ning was to doc­u­ment this change, and I knew it would be a long-term project.”

Accord­ing to POLITI­CO, Greenland’s ice sheets are los­ing 270 bil­lion tonnes of water per year, as the cli­mate cri­sis inten­si­fies. 2024 saw the hottest year ever on record across the world, pass­ing the 1.5C thresh­old set by the Paris agree­ment for the first time, while some pro­jec­tions pre­dict that there will be zero ice left in the polar sea as soon as 2030.

Mean­while, the Pres­i­dent elect of the USA, Don­ald Trump, has announced a desire to take over Green­land – refus­ing to rule out using mil­i­tary or eco­nom­ic force to do so – with some reports sug­gest­ing that he is look­ing to take advan­tage of the area’s believed nat­ur­al resources and strate­gic trad­ing route geog­ra­phy once the ice has melted.

Nenet’s Camp Side, Siberia, 2016 Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery

While Den­mark has dis­missed Trump’s request to pur­chase the island, one thing is for cer­tain – change is com­ing to the Arc­tic cir­cle. Axels­son notes that he saw changes him­self through­out the decades, most strik­ing­ly in a decline in tra­di­tion­al Inu­it cloth­ing. When he met the elder­ly man in Qaanaaq, he was wear­ing inu­it cloth­ing just as his ances­tors wore over 150 years ago – a sur­vival tac­tic to keep warm in such a cold cli­mate. But today, on the east coast of Green­land, Axels­son says it’s rare to see that much fur clothing.

You can’t get those same pic­tures as you did years before, because the cli­mate is chang­ing how these peo­ple are dress­ing and doing things,” he explains.

Yet despite these changes, there were con­stants. Axels­son fol­lowed many of his sub­jects for over 35 years, with some becom­ing life-long friends. He says the Arc­tic com­mu­ni­ties still show great fond­ness for their home.

The peo­ple who live in the Arc­tic real­ly love it and want to be there,” he says. Of course they have tele­vi­sions and have seen movies show­ing a dif­fer­ent world, and they want to trav­el and see those places. But they also always want to come back. This is their home.

For that, I try to catch those moments in their life and in their envi­ron­ment because I know the moment is nev­er com­ing back.”

Hjelmer Hammeken on the sea ice, Scoresbysund, 1995 Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery
An Old Woman’s House Burned Down, Sermiliqaq, Greenland, 1997 Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery
Vatnajökull, Iceland, 2018 Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery
Jökulgil, Landmannalaugar, Iceland, 2001 Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery
Tiniteqilaaq, East Greenland, 2015 Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery

At the Edge of the World by Rag­nar Axels­son is on view at The Pho­tog­ra­phers’ Gallery until Jan­u­ary 26.

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