-
Dipnetting on the Kenai River. -
Winfred Obruk. Shishmaref, Alaska. -
Passing time between tides while dipnetting on the Kenai River. -
Yup’ik dog house in Kwethluk, Alaska. -
Automobile decoration during the Fur Rendezvous parade in Anchorage, Alaska. -
Alaska Landscape No. 3 at the State Fair in Palmer, Alaska. -
Gutting and processing sockeye salmon on the Kenai River. -
Ice ferns in Anchorage, Alaska. -
Iceberg at low tide. Prince William Sound, Alaska. -
Swarming mosquitoes in the spring. -
upherecover-jpg
In Up Here, a book of photos, essays and poems curated by the Anchorage Museum, the North is a way of living rather than a latitudinal state. With photographs from Brian Adams, Acacia Johnson, Oscar Avellaneda-Cruz, Clark Mishler and others, Up Here zooms in on the contours of Northern lives amid landscapes that could seem deserted from a distance. But there is always movement: People are dwarfed by iceberg chunks, gut sockeye salmon and play cards on the banks of the Kenai River. Humans and nature seem to exist in hard-won equilibrium. In both photographs and text, climate change’s oncoming impacts on the vulnerable region appear. “Maps have long showed the Arctic at the edge — up at the top, far away from the center of humanity,” Julie Decker, one of the curators, writes in her opening essay. “Today the Arctic is at the edge of discovering the limits and the glory of human resilience.”
Up Here,
Edited by Julie Decker and Kirsten J. Anderson
195 pages, hardcover: $44.95
The University of Washington Press, 2016
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline See the hard-won equilibrium of Alaska.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
