Images from ilovegreenland’s Flickr photostream

Don’t be fooled by all this beauty, South Greenland’s Tasermiut Fjord is one of the most dangerous terrains on the planet. Very few are willing to risk exploring it and many have died trying. That’s why we should all be very grateful for people like Vladimir Donkov, who was just crazy enough to risk life and limb to bring back these amazing photos.

Above Zero by Olaf Otto Becker

About the project:

Following Broken Line, a prizewinning portrait of the coast of Greenland, Olaf Otto Becker turns his attention to the interior of the island in his new series, Above Zero. Second only to Antarctica, Greenland has the largest inland ice surfaces in the world. Becker’s spectacular portraits of this region are taken during physically strenuous, sometimes life-threatening treks among glacial crevasses and melting ice floes, with a cumbersome large-format camera. His photo studies draw out the overwhelming beauty of this icy landscape, while documenting their present fragility: dust and rust in the air form black, crusty deposits, which, in conjunction with global warming, accelerate the melting of the ice sheets—with what will probably be inevitable, catastrophic results. Becker warns that even in these uninhabited regions, human actions can have fatal consequences.

These spectacular photos of icebergs are by David Burdeny.

Burdeny on his project:

During 2007 and into the spring of 2008, I made several long journeys to the upper and lower extremes of our planet to photograph the shorelines, monolithic ice forms and landscapes of Greenland, Icelandic and Antarctica. Most of these places are arduous to reach, beyond the borders of domestic transportation routes, accessible only by small aircraft or boat. All are endangered to some extent – threatened by tourism, climate change, industry and the hunt for oil.

This new series, Icebergs begins to explore what are currently the most geopolitical and geographically sensitive shorelines on earth.

Formally different than my previous work, but motivated by similar principals, these images attempt to encapsulate both the otherworldliness and the vital reality of the northern seas and oceans. I was drawn to the fragility and grace of the frozen landscape. For me, the work is both a celebration of nature’s survival and an elegy.

From Melt by Simon Harsent

Harsent on his work:

[Melt] begins with images of the massive icebergs as they enter Greenland’s Disco Bay from the Ilulissat Icefjord; it ends with the icebergs off the East Coast of Newfoundland, by which time they have travelled hundreds of miles, and have been so battered and broken down that they are little more than ghosts of what they once were. Seeing them first overpowering in grandeur and then, later, about to be absorbed back into the flux from which they came, is both beautiful and humbling: a metamorphosis that endows them with a life-span, each with it’s own personality, each with it’s own story…It is impossible, however, to look at these images and not think of the environmental issues we face right now.