For seven years, photographer Subhankar Banerjee roamed the ‘wilderness’ of the Arctic, capturing its profusion of life. We bring you a story of his journey from Kolkata to Alaska, from engineer to green icon
On may 15, after three years of bitter wrangling with environment activists, the US government classified the polar bear as “threatened” under the country’s Endangered Species Act. In the protracted campaign, one image kept turning up in angry posters, on indignant blogs and grim newspaper articles—a bear, its coat flecked golden in the sunset, walking in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, as a blue pool of ice caught its reflection. Subhankar Banerjee, who took the photograph in June 2001, looks back in satisfaction. “I consider this (the government decision) to be my victory and the victory of environmentalists,” says the photographer who was born in Kolkata and now lives in a modest apartment in Santa Fe, a small township in New Mexico. “The picture has been used by 1,643 different outlets for this recent row alone. It’s all over the Internet, print and even television.”

Banerjee’s photographs of the Arctic region, which includes Alaska, pass the thousand-word test of eloquence. In the last decade, they have been the explosive evidence US environmentalists needed to push their case against drilling for oil in the Arctic. In 2003, Democrat senator from California Barbara Boxer flashed his photographs during a debate in the Senate. He has been publicly called a liar by another Republican senator.
So what do these photographs reveal? Taken over a period of seven years, his frames have captured the landscape, the wildlife and the people of this remote expanse. Appended with self-written, essay–like captions, they have busted the “dangerous” myth that the Arctic is what the Americans call it—the “last wilderness”. “My work challenges all such deeply entrenched perceptions,” says the 40-year-old. 

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