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Chris's favorite thing about the Arctic Ocean is the ice. It comes in a myriad colors, shapes, and sizes. It can stop an icebreaker in its tracks and make you feel insignificant. ©Chris Linder

The fifth Live from the Poles expedition starts on April 3 and runs through May 11, 2009. Science writer Helen Fields and I will be joining a large research team studying the impact of climate change on the Bering Sea ecosystem aboard the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaking ship Healy.

The Bering Sea is one of the most productive regions of the world’s oceans, accounting for nearly half of the total U.S. fishing catch. Climate models are forecasting substantial warming for the southeastern Bering Sea shelf region, which will dramatically alter the distribution of species of fish, seabirds, and marine mammals. Understanding this ecosystem and how it will respond to rapidly rising temperatures is of critical importance to both commercial and native fisheries. The 40+ researchers aboard the Healy will be deploying instruments and collecting samples in round-the-clock shifts for six weeks straight. Our two-person media team will be in the thick of the action, whether it’s collecting cores of sea ice or lowering high-tech plankton microscopes into the icy water.

In addition to the still photography, I plan to spend more time collecting professional-quality audio during this expedition. Although I have collected ambient sounds during previous trips (see the Polar Fun pages on the Polar Discovery website under each expedition), for this trip I plan to add interviews. I will continue the time-lapse photography I experimented with on the last few expeditions and perhaps even dabble with videography.

All of the photographs I take on this expedition will be tagged with the latitude and longitude using a GPS tagger, which will make them particular useful to the science team. But the core objectives of the project will remain the same—to deliver cutting-edge polar science to the public online through professional still photography and science writing.

An image from Ed's "Curse of the Black Gold" project, which leverages years worth of multimedia content to raise awareness about the tragic effects of the oil companies in the area. ©Ed Kashi

1/7/09

Photojournalism and the documentary tradition is alive and well, but like Frank Zappa once said about jazz, “Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.” The question I constantly confront is, how do we move this medium forward into the new millennium, keeping it fresh, alive, relevant and growing? We cannot let the digital revolution destroy the magical powers of still photography. I firmly believe we are in a period of transcendent growth and opportunity. How do we reinvent still photography in the digital age and prove the naysayers wrong?

Having the patience and time to produce in-depth, meaningful work is of utmost importance — but now without the support of magazines, how do we continue? We cannot allow the economic and political shifts in media to destroy our ability to get out into the world to tell stories people want to hear and see. We’ve never been at a more challenging crossroads for photojournalism, and finding alternative sources of funding and dissemination are essential. What will those look like and who will they come from? My guess is from a variety of places: NGOs and other foundations with specific interest in the issues our work deals with, the editorial world both in print and online (with online providing the bulk of new opportunities over time), grants from both the arts and photography, but also direct partnerships with non-media sources such as universities.

In the face of all this uncertainty, it’s especially important to keep it real for yourself and true to your passions, causes, joys, and inquisitions. What drives me is the compulsion to seek a kind of truth, to find out what certain realities feel and look like as they relate to issues and themes that matter to me personally. Now when I translate those situations into stories, they are no longer only visual — instead they include all the elements of storytelling. Still images are the basis for these stories and the structure for my explorations. But utilizing more of the senses, with sound that incorporates the voices of my subjects, the ambient sounds of the situations my images are made in, moving imagery to give more visual dimension to the subjects and place, and finally music…that most universal of languages. Today we inhabit a playland of creative opportunities unrivaled from the past. Yet for me still photographs form the emotional core, visual feel, and personal approach to my work as firmly as ever.

A researcher pushes ice floes away from a delicate instrument. Photo by Chris Linder, WHOI

Ultimately, my goals as a photographer are to communicate three things: the process of doing science, the excitement of science as a career, and the beauty of the earth’s most remote places.

The “Live from the Poles” project has given the public a glimpse into a world that very few people will ever experience — the inner workings of major polar research expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. I believe that the “behind the scenes” moments of overcoming logistical hurdles, deploying instruments, and just plain surviving in the polar regions are all important stories that are seldom covered by traditional media. Let’s face it, working at the edge of the map is adventurous, and I shoot the expeditions like any other adrenalin-soaked activity like mountain biking or climbing. Which relates to my second goal…

I believe that scientists have suffered from a branding problem. What do you think of when you hear the word “scientist”? At least when I was growing up, it conjured images of white-bearded men scribbling obtuse formulas on blackboards or huddling over bubbling test tubes. While this stereotype may have some basis in fact, it doesn’t accurately describe the scientists I know. My colleagues at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and other earth science research institutions often brave punishing weather conditions to collect their field data, on glaciers, mountains, oceans, and volcanoes. I have photographed oceanographers working in the Gulf Stream off Cape Hatteras in winter, when waves up to 30 feet high threw our 177-foot research ship around like a child’s toy. I have trudged alongside glaciologists as they explored miles of rugged terrain on the Greenland Ice Sheet. These people are as tough as nails and determined to the core. With my photographs, I am hoping to create a new image of active, adventurous scientists. By extension, I hope that our audience, particularly kids, will develop a stronger interest in science as a career.

My final goal, to document the pristine and otherworldly environment of the polar regions is, in some ways, the easiest task and in other ways the hardest. Obviously, these places are incredible locations for landscape photography. There are no tripod holes from previous shooters here — in many cases I am seeing landscapes that no other human eyes have looked upon. But to get the very best shots, you need to give up certain comforts, like sleep. Often, the best light for landscape photography in the Arctic and Antarctic occurs in the middle of the “night.” During our final week on the Greenland Ice Sheet last summer, the entire sky flushed pink for an hour every night at about 2 a.m. Sleep becomes a luxury in conditions like that; I pushed myself hard every day to document the science, napped for a few hours, shot until 5am, then repeat. I just tell myself, you can catch up on sleep when you get back.

Abay, 28, Awash Fontale, Ethiopia ©Phil Borges, courtesy CARE

Miki Johnson: How did you first come across Phil Borges and his work? Did he make contact with you first?

Valenda Campbell: I’ve been here at CARE since 2001 and part of my role is to find photographers to represent our work. My associate photo editor at the time, Jason Sangster, and I were familiar with Phil’s work, through his Tibetan Portrait and Enduring Spirit projects. This was I guess around Spring of 2004 and we were looking at his work and saying, wow, his style of photography really captures that connection that we want our supporters to make with our project participants. And the way he was able to concisely give the viewer a glimpse into that person’s life and their world was just great. So we said let’s call him up and see if he’d be interested in working some with CARE. So Jason contacted him and we set up a conference call.

We got on the phone and told him what we were about. We let him know that we were really interested in working with him and asked if he would possibly do some work for CARE to help us get our message out. He was interested. I think Phil really connected with the fact that we work primarily with indigenous communities in developing countries and emphasize work with women and girls. He had been photographing indigenous communities for years and he already knew, from all of his travels and his previous projects, how women and girls who are usually marginalized can really influence their families and communities if given the opportunity. So it was just a really good match, and we began talking about what we could put together. What do we want to do? What do we want to accomplish? And that’s how it started.

MJ: And what did that conversation sound like when you guys started to talk about your goals and what you could do together?

VC: We familiarized Phil with everything CARE does, all the variety of programming we do, including microfinance, education, HIV/AIDS, maternal health, emergency relief, the whole gamut. We explained how, at that time, we were beginning to place new emphasis in our communications around CARE’s work with women. Our development work had evolved over the years, and we realized that CARE’s most successful programming was centered around the empowerment of women in the communities where we work. And that really struck a cord with Phil.

He’s a busy man, and he’s not one to just sort of take on a random commission here and there. He was really interested, but if we were going to do something, he wanted it to be a project. If he was going to commit some time to it, he wanted to have really specific outcomes in mind. And he let us know that the message that we had to deliver and the kinds of projects we were talking about was really meshing well with what he was looking to do for his next big project. He talked about everything he’d learned and come to realize through his work with these cultures and that he felt our messaging around women’s empowerment captured that. More »