ARCTIC CIRCLE

“They say, that inside the Arctic Circle, on summer nights the sun does not set. They call it the midnight sun.”
―Ana’s line in Lovers of the Arctic Circle

Otto and Ana were kids when they met each other. Their names are palindromes. They met by chance, people are related by chance. A story of circular lives, with circular names, and a circular place where the day never ends in the midnight sun. There are things that never end, and love is one of them.

This is the plot of Lovers of the Arctic Circle by Julio Medem. In 1956 the term “Arctic Haze” was coined by J.M. Mitchell, a US Air Force officer who started to investigate the increasingly emergency of global warming and eventually went on to become an eminent climatologist. This fog was consequence of a visible haze in the atmosphere due to anthropogenic air pollution. It was first noticed in the eighteenth century when the Industrial Revolution was at its peak and it has continued ever since.

These photographs were taken during a voyage on the postal ship which delivers goods and supplies to these barren ports and towns. The question as to who chooses to live in this desolate climate arises in these images that are almost flattened by the weight of the leaden sky. Some of the images aim to talk about the presence of the human being through its absence. Others, about the uncomfortable beauty of a land that is suffering in silence. In a way, the untouched landscapes of Arctic Circle are suddenly turned into an allegory of human greed.