Narratives from the Far North

From the first moment she could work a camera, Acacia Johnson 14 PH began focusing on her most immediate surroundings—the breathtaking nature in Alaska, her home state. So far she has made more than 55 photographic expeditions to polar regions, returning with poignant visual narratives of the impact of globalization and climate change on ancient traditions and ways of life. Now that two of her most recent series—on Alaskan brown bears and an Inuit community in Canada—have appeared in National Geographic, she’s reaching wide audiences.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the impact of what I create and which stories the world could benefit from most,” Johnson says. That led her to approach NatGeo last year with a timely story about growing environmental threats to Alaskan brown bears. Now that a proposed new gold and copper mine near the Alaska Peninsula has gotten the green light from state and federal officials, activists warn that the fragile ecosystem supporting the densest population of brown bears on Earth will be irrevocably ruined.

“It’s a story of incredible environmental urgency— and one that hits close to home for my family,” says Johnson, whose parents both worked as brown bear guides in the 1980s. Today, roughly 8–10,000 bears— a fifth of North America’s total—live in the state sanctuary and surrounding region most closely impacted by the proposed Pebble Mine.

A female known as T Bear nurses her year-old cubs in the tidal flats of McNeil River State Game Sanctuary and Refuge, with Augustine Volcano in the background. A proposed mine corridor to the north is expected to disrupt the habitat for all wildlife in the region.

Flying over Alaska’s McNeil Falls at 2,000 feet in a single-engine aircraft—with bush pilot Kirk Johnson, her father—Johnson was able to photograph brown bears feasting on chum salmon in the river.

“To see this many bears in one place is a huge testament to how pristine the entire ecosystem is,” Johnson notes in the online NatGeo story, which went live in January. But as the piece points out, all that is in jeopardy now that Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and President Trump teamed up to “enthusiastically endorse” the Pebble Mine and the US Environmental Protection Agency subsequently dropped its opposition to the ecologically precarious project.

“I had shot some wildlife photos while working as a polar expedition guide,” Johnson says, “but up until last summer, it was never my focus.” Still, happy to revisit her family in Anchorage and tap into transportation help from her father, an accomplished bush pilot, she spent six weeks photographing bears in and around the pristine McNeil River State Game Sanctuary and Refuge last summer in what became “a dream assignment and a family camping adventure rolled into one.”

Thinking about the project in retrospect, Johnson notes the clear contrasts from her previous photojournalistic ventures. “With animals you need a lot of time and patience. It’s kind of a meditative experience,” she says. “But with people, it’s completely different. It’s about cultivating relationships and listening to their stories.”

Winter clothing made from caribou skin keeps Valerie and Michael Qaunaq warm, while their three-yearold son Joshua is bundled up in an outfit made from a harp seal.

A break in the sea ice means a carefully orchestrated crossing for Olayuk Naqitarvik, pulling his grandson in a qamutik (sled) packed with supplies for a family camping trip. Despite being ill and frail, Naqitarvik’s wife Martha insisted on taking part to relay her deep knowledge of living off the land to the next generations.

Learning From the Ice

That difference is clear in Johnson’s series Sea Ice Stories, which ran in the September 2019 issue of National Geographic—as the cover story in selected international editions. In 2014, right after graduating from RISD, she earned a Fulbright from the Canadian government to spend the long, dark winter living in an Inuit community in Ikpiarjuk, Nunavut on Baffin Island.

“When you don’t see the sun for a long time, your eyes grow more sensitive to light,” Johnson points out. “My perception of the moon and the stars was a lot greater than I was accustomed to—their light was staggering.”

So, too, was the experience overall. After originally proposing to do a landscape-focused photography project on Baffin Island, Johnson says: “Once I showed up the reality was quite different from what I imagined. Instead it seemed more important to focus on the cultural transition happening there and the importance of the Arctic landscape in people’s lives.”

Struck by the richness of the sea ice ecosystem, which has sustained the Inuit for millennia, Johnson realized that she needed to focus on the effect melting ice will have on people’s lives, cultures and subsistence traditions.

“In the past three decades, multiyear ice—the thickest and oldest type that supports the Arctic marine ecosystem—has declined by 95 percent. But everything revolves around the stability of the sea ice. It’s a living ecosystem—a facilitator of life,” Johnson says.

“Elders no longer can predict safe travel routes on thinning ice, and animal migration patterns are changing. The future of the ice—and those who live on it—is uncertain, but the warming climate will drastically impact the people who live here.”

Just as these projects started to provide inroads into photojournalism, Johnson got accepted to grad school at the University of Virginia. Although COVID-19 forced her to leave campus this semester, she's now halfway through an MFA program in creative writing, still trying to figure out how she wants to work with words and images going forward.

Wearing a parka sewn by her mother, Ashley Hughes celebrated her 10th birthday camping with friends and family at Ikpikittuarjuk Bay, where they participated in the Inuit community’s annual ice fishing competition for arctic char.

“I think it would make sense for me to write the words of a photo documentary I’m heavily invested in,” Johnson says. “But in some cases it can divide your focus, so I’ve been extremely grateful to the writers I’ve partnered with.”

For now Johnson is thinking about other environmentally focused photo essays she might want to pursue in faraway places after she earns her degree. And she also plans to return to Baffin Island after a few years—to document “the passage of time” and reconnect with friends there.

“I don’t want to limit myself,” she says, “but I do feel a magnetic draw to polar landscapes and have many more ideas for stories about the Arctic.”

Detail of Johnson’s photo of fireweed blooming in the foreground as visitors watch brown bears walk through the edge of the McNeil River campground on the Alaskan Peninsula.