ARCTIC: NEW FRONTIER
In 2018, Yuri Kozyrev and Kadir van Lohuizen carried out a pioneer double polar expedition with the support of the 9th edition of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award dedicated to the Arctic. From June through September 2018, they covered 15,000 km of the Arctic Circle simultaneously, Yuri from the Russian side and Kadir from the western passage. Their investigative photo reportage Arctic: New Frontier focuses on the consequences of the melting sea ice for the planet, and the medium-term prospect of its total disappearance. From Russia to Norway, Greenland, Canada and Alaska, the two photographers, in their respective areas of research, explored key issues affecting the Arctic - the opening of new trade routes, the militarization of borders, the search for mineral resources, polar tourism, etc. - and their impact on our daily lives. As they explain, “The melting of the polar sea ice is in the process of changing the map of the world forever. In visiting all the affected regions and countries in one expedition and by showing how the different players – starting with Russia and the U.S. – are working on conquering the North Pole, we are revealing how the impact of climate change in the Arctic is of global significance for the rest of the world.” - Kadir van Lohuizen and Yuri Kozyrev
GREENLAND, JULY 2018
The edge of the ice sheet close to Kangerlussuaq. In front of a river of meltwater. Due to climate change the ice sheet slowly melts, not only do glaciers retreat at a rapid speed, the ice sheet itself melts forming melting streams and reservoirs -- this meltwater forms underground rivers.
© Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR for Carmignac Foundation
JULY 2018
Scientists on their way to Eastgrip on a C130. The flight from Kangerlussuaq to the camp takes about 3.30 hrs. The plane lands on ski's.
The Eastgrip science camp is located on the northeast of the ice sheet of Greenland.
© Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR for Carmignac Foundation
DEADHORSE / PRUDHOE BAY, ALASKA. AUGUST 2018
Deadhorse is the end of the Pan American highway at 70°N 148°W on the coast of the Arctic ocean. Deadhorse unknown land until oil was found in Prudhoe Bay and the Trans-Alaska pipeline system was built. The residents of Deadhorse are almost all migrant workers from the US and Latin America who work in the oil industry. The population is around 5000. The Trans-Alaska pipeline was constructed between 1974 and 1977 after the 1973 oil crisis. Currently the pipeline transports around 700,000 barrels a day. The oilfields are being leased and are mostly based on native land, nevertheless the companies deny access to any outsiders.
© Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR for Carmignac Foundation
ALASKA, AUGUST 2018
On the bridge of the Healy coast guard ship. The Healy is an icebreaker of the US coast guard, which is partly used for science.
Recently the coast guard opened its forward operating base in Kotzebue, which is part of operation 'Arctic shield'. The Healy and other coast guard ships are part of this operation. According to a press release, Arctic Shield is intended “to support Coast Guard missions in response to increased maritime activity in the Arctic.”
© Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR for Carmignac Foundation
POINT HOPE, ARCTIC, ALASKA. MAY 2018
The last piece of sea ice on the coast of Point Hope.
The Inuit community of Point Hope is allowed to catch 10 bowheads per year. Native communities are allowed to hunt whales for their own use. The quota is given by the International Whaling Commission. Now, due to the early disappearance of the sea ice, it's much harder for the community to catch whales and it threatens their livelihood. Normally the hunting starts when the sea ice starts to break in the spring. When the whales migrate up north, they use the channels to come up for breathing. If there is no ice they are spread out over a much wider area and are much more difficult to track.
© Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR for Carmignac Foundation
GREENLAND, JULY 2018
The drill for the ice core at the Eastgrip science camp is located on the northeast of the ice sheet of Greenland.
© Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR for Carmignac Foundation
GREENLAND, JULY 2018
Melt-rivers close to the edge of the ice sheet near Kangerlussuaq. Due to climate change the ice sheet slowly melts and glaciers retreat at a rapid speed, which forms melting streams and reservoirs where the meltwater forms underground rivers.
© Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR for Carmignac Foundation
DISCO BAY, GREENLAND. JULY 2018
Tourists in Disco Bay near Illulisat, Greenland. Disco Bay is often advertised as the birthplace of icebergs. The ice originates from the Sermeq Kujalleq glacier (Jakobshavn glacier), one of the fastest retreating glaciers in the world. Smaller pieces of ice resulting from a quicker melt often block waterways and ports.
© Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR for Carmignac Foundation
SABETTA YAMAL-NENETS AUTONOMOUS AREA. MAY 2018
The Yamal Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) plant and the Sabetta seaport on the Yamal Peninsula in Russia. The Yamal LNG Project involves the resource base of Yuzhno-Tambeyskoye (South Tambey) field located on the Yamal Peninsula. The project provides for the construction of a LNG plant with a capacity of 16.5 million tons, a sea port as well as a Sabetta Airport. Yamal LNG shareholders include Novatek (50.1%), Total (20%), CNPC (20%) and the Silk Road Fund (9.9%).
© Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Carmignac Foundation
CAPE KAMENNY, RUSSIA. MAY 2018
Gazprom Neft's "Arctic Gate" terminal in Gulf of Ob. The Novoportovskoye is one of the biggest oil fields in the Yamal Peninsula. The field is located 30 km from the coast of the Ob bay, and oil is transported by pipeline to Cape Kamenny where a terminal facility has been developed. The company Gazprom Neft is operating the Novy Port project, which is built to be able to deliver up to eight million tons of oil per year. A fleet of six tankers are being built for the Novy Port. The first vessels of the new fleet, the Shturman Albanov and the Shturman Malygin were put on the water in early 2016. The third fleet tanker, the Shturman Ovtsyn set course for the history books when it, in mid-winter 2017, left the yard of the Samsung Heavy Industries in South Korea, made it through the Bering Strait and sailed all the way to Yamal. Later, the Shturman Shcherbinin and the Shturman Koshelev were built.
© Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Carmignac Foundation
YAMAL PENINSULA, RUSSIA. APRIL 2018
The Yamal peninsula in western Siberia, a homeland of nomadic Nenets, reindeer herders.
The Nenets people of the Siberian arctic are the guardians of a style of reindeer herding that is the last of its kind. Through a yearly migration of over a thousand kilometers, these people move gigantic herds of reindeer from summer pastures in the north to winter pastures just south of the Arctic Circle. No one knows for certain whether it is the reindeer that lead the people or vice versa. What is certain is that fewer places on earth are home to a more challenging environment, where temperatures plummet to -50C and where crossing the world's fifth largest river as it deep-freezes is just part of the routine. Such a difficult environment unites the people physically through a regimented work ethic, but far more importantly, the Yamal-Nenets are unified by a robust and vibrant culture. It is a culture that has had to survive a turbulent history, from early Russian colonization, to Stalin’s terror regime, to the modern day dangers of a rapacious oil and gas development program.
© Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Carmignac Foundation
NORILSK, RUSSIA. JULY 2018
A car passing by the central square of Norilsk (Lenin square).
The city of Norilsk was constructed in the 1930-1940's by famous soviet architects, prisoners of Norilsk labor camp of the GULAG system. Starting as a remote and isolated Soviet Arctic outpost in the 1920s, development of Norilsk occurred rapidly after the discovery of vast amounts of nickel and other metal ores. Despite being located in one of the most extreme cold climates on Earth, the city's population increased from a few hundred to over 180,000 over the course of about 50 years, making it the largest and most densely inhabited Arctic city built on permafrost. Serving as a de facto full-scale Arctic laboratory for architecture, urban design, and construction techniques, progress occurred at great cost to the workers and prisoners who built the city. The result – a hybrid of socialist classicism and modernist architecture and city planning adapted to extreme conditions – is in many ways as improbable and extreme as the Arctic environment itself. But beneath the apparently singular and uncompromising form of Norilsk lies an important legacy of effort to create a functional, efficient, and livable city in the Arctic.
© Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Carmignac Foundation
NORILSK, RUSSIA. JULY 2018
Logs of the old prisoners GULAG barracks appear from the ground each summer due to the melting of the permafrost. Abandoned buildings of one of the oldest nickel factories in Norilsk are seen in the background.
As part of plans to clean up Norilsk’s reputation, in June of 2016 the company Norilsk Nickel shut down its nickel factory: a 74-year-old enterprise that emitted 350,000 metric tons of sulphur dioxide each year. But other plants in Norilsk have taken on the nickel factory’s operations, while the final stages of production are being transferred to plants in the Murmansk region, which Norway has long accused of sending “death clouds” of pollution across its border with Russia.
© Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Carmignac Foundation
NORILSK, RUSSIA. AUGUST 2018
The copper factory.
Three plants of Norilsk — the nickel factory, the copper factory and the metallurgical complex "Nadejda” (“Hope”), were built successively in 1942, 1949 and 1981. 56% of the population works in these places.
© Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Carmignac Foundation
BATAGAY, RUSSIA. JULY 2017
The Batagaika Crater in the town of Batagay, Russia, is known as the "hell crater" or the "gateway to the underworld.” Over 300 feet deep and more than half a mile long, the depression is one of the largest in the world. Scientists believe it started forming in the 1960s when the permafrost under the area began to thaw after nearby forests were cleared.
© Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Carmignac Foundation
KADIR VAN LOHUIZEN
Born in The Netherlands in 1963, Kadir van Lohuizen started his career as a photo-journalist in 1988 by reporting the Intifada. During the mid-1990s, he covered conflicts in Africa and the aftermaths of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He is best known for his long-term projects documenting seven rivers of the world, which he roamed from source to mouth. He also documented the rising of sea levels and its consequences, the diamond industry, the post-Katrina period in the USA, violences against women and migration in the Americas. Kadir has received numerous prizes and awards in photojournalism. His environmental project ‘Wasteland’ won the first World Press Photo Prize in the Environmental category. In 2018, he was the co-laureate with Yuri Kozyrev of the 9th Carmignac Photojournalism Award, which supported the production of ‘Arctic: New Frontier’, their double polar expedition documenting the consequences of the climate crisis. Kadir van Lohuizen is a frequent lecturer and photography teacher, based in Amsterdam.
YURI KOZYREV
As a photojournalist for the past 25 years, Yuri Kozyrev (Russia, 1963) has witnessed many world changing events. He started his career documenting the collapse of the Soviet Union, capturing the rapid changes in the former USSR for the L.A. Times during the 90s. In 2001, Yuri Kozyrev started to cover international news, working in Afghanistan and Iraq as a photographer for TIME Magazine. Since 2011, Yuri Kozyrev has been documenting the “Arab Revolutions” and their aftermaths in Bahrain, Yemen, Tunisia and specifically in Egypt and Libya. Since 2015, he covers the conflict in eastern Ukraine, the rise of Russian nationalism and the migrant crisis in Europe. Yuri Kozyrev has received numerous honors for his work, including severalWorld Press Photo Awards, the OPC’s Oliver Rebbot Award, the ICP Infinity Award for Photojournalism, the Frontline Club Award, the Visa d’or News and the PrixBayeux-Calvados, and was named 2011 Photographer of the Year in the Picture Of the Year International competition. In 2018, he was the co-laureate with Kadir van Lohuizen of the 9th Carmignac Photojournalism Award, which supported the production of ‘Arctic: New Frontier’, their double polar expedition documenting the consequences of the climate crisis.