GREENLAND’S ice sheet is visibly melting, as the dramatic image here shows. The wider Arctic is in defrost mode too. It isn’t just the frigid surface that is changing. Resources long hidden below are becoming accessible, sea routes are opening and military posturing is intensifying.
Arctic: New frontier, a project by photographers Yuri Kozyrev and Kadir van Lohuizen, captures all this in a series of images being exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery in London from 15 March. More of them are shown on the next two pages. The pair won the 9th Carmignac Photojournalism Award, which funds photo reportage of human rights violations and geostrategic issues. They used the endowment to support two epic journeys.
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Kozyrev followed the coast of the Barents Sea, travelling on a ship making use of newly navigable summer shipping routes that skirt Russia’s northern coast. Van Lohuizen followed the Northwest Passage, a seasonal sea route that arcs above North America, visiting a new training base for the Canadian Army, among other places.
Their images lay bare the impact of the melting ice on people’s lives. It means mining becoming more feasible in the high Arctic. Industry there has a chequered history – Kozyrev visited Norilsk, Russia, a town long blighted by pollution.
Similarly, in spring 2018 he joined the Serotetto family, who are nomadic herders, as they moved their reindeer to summer pastures. For the first time, they weren’t able to complete their planned journey because of the melting of the permafrost.
Photographers, Kadir van Lohuizen & Yuri Kozyrev NOOR for Fondation Carmignac
