a one-year photographic survey of alaska for wilderness conservation and culture preservation.
The Great Alaska Project is a year-long documentary and fine art photography initiative by Joshua Klein, creating a visual record of Alaska at a critical moment in its ecological and cultural history.
Driven by the accelerating effects of climate change and the recent opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, the project seeks to build a large body of photographic work that will serve both as fine art and as a catalyst for wilderness conservation and cultural preservation.
It draws on a lineage that runs from Carleton Watkins to Ansel Adams to Sebastião Salgado: photography's power to forge an emotional connection between viewers and the land and people it depicts.
Your support makes this project possible. Join the journey.
the project
20 weeks of fieldwork across Alaska's remote and rapidly changing landscapes
Destinations spanning the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Denali, Katmai, Bristol Bay, and the climate-relocation village of Newtok/Mertarvik
Seasonal timeline spanning spring thaw, long summer light, the first freeze of autumn, and the cold darkness of winter, capturing the land and its communities through the full arc of a year
Subjects including the Yup'ik, Gwich'in, and Iñupiat communities, the Porcupine caribou herd, and the glaciers and ecosystems bearing the visible marks of a warming climate
Fine art documentary photography capturing both the scale of the land and the intimacy of the people whose lives are tied to it
Deliverables including a museum-caliber exhibition, a published large format monograph, and a public digital archive preserving the work for researchers and future generations
“The Great Alaska Project is designed to document the people and lands of the last great American frontier as the effects of climate change take hold.”
THE URGENCY OF NOW
“We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.
In this unfolding conundrum of life and history,
there “is” such a thing as being too late.
This is no time for apathy or complacency.
This is a time for vigorous and positive action.”
Martin Luther King, jr
April 4, 1967
a CALL TO positive ACTION
Dear Friends -
In 1967, Martin Luther King spoke about the urgency of the moment and the necessity of taking positive action. With him that day was his friend, Civil Rights photographer Benedict Fernandez. I met Ben as a young photographer, and he mentored me through my education at Parsons where he often spoke of his time with Dr. King and the power of photography to effect change. At graduation — and by a stroke of fate — in the same New York church where Dr. King had spoken those words years before, Ben gave me a hug, a diploma, and a responsibility to use the camera as a tool for taking action.
Today climate change has become the existential threat, and I am called to take positive action.
Twice I have experienced wildfires sweep through my hometown and seen firsthand the environmental and human toll. This is why I choose to go to Alaska. o photograph at the frontline of climate change, to document a spectacular landscape at risk, and to show what will be lost if we do not act.
However, this is not a project I can do alone. I will need the support of friends and benefactors to bring this endeavor to life.
Joshua
This is the journey of a lifetime, and it can't wait: bush flights to villages already displaced by rising water, skiffs chasing glaciers that are vanishing faster every year, guides into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the last untouched wildernesses left on this planet.
Fiscal sponsorship through the Creative Visions Foundation makes every gift fully tax-deductible and unlocks institutional grants that would otherwise be out of reach for an individual artist.
What's needed now is support to get there. Every flight, every ferry, every week in the field depends on funding. I'm asking you to be among the people who believe photography can effect change, and to back that belief with a gift today.
The Great Alaska Project is fiscally sponsored by Creative Visions, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that supports creative activists, those that use the arts and media to ignite social change.
All donations to The Great Alaska Project are tax deductible.