Pictures Show Climate Change's Dramatic Arctic Impact

The breathtaking, alien landscapes of the Arctic have always captivated the human imagination—it was long a world beyond the borders of the known world, full of portent and mystery. Now the ultima thule of medieval geographies becomes more charted each year, and lone expeditions of pole-hungry explorers have been replaced by tourists, researchers, and fuel industry prospectors. (Watch whales surface and the Northern Lights dance in pristinely beautiful Norway.)

Though photography has taken him around the world, 42-year-old Christian Åslund has spent most of his life in the Arctic, documenting these very changes. The Swedish photojournalist, who has collaborated with Greenpeace for nearly twenty years, reached out from Stockholm to talk with National Geographic about photography, seismic blasting, and the importance of making things known. (Meet another Your Shot photographer taking a stand against climate change.)

What’s the most remarkable assignment you’ve done for Greenpeace?

It's got to be the glacier comparison that we did [at Svalbard] because it's interesting on so many levels—our access to the archives there from the early 1900s, and then being able to trace where the photographers were, because we didn't know exactly where they shot from. We had to track down where the photos were taken, and then go on location and then sort of follow their footsteps.