Glacier: Bradford Washburn’s mOUNTAIN Photography Meets Contemporary Counterpart
Photographs by Alex Joseph Hansen
On view May 1st through July 30th 2024
Exhibition Reception and Artist Talk: Thursday, May 23rd, 6-8pm
Alaska is rich in its environmental diversity, but no landscape is more alluring than that made of ice and stone. Home to one of the largest ice caps outside of the polar regions, these frozen landscapes cut deep across the state’s interior and seep into waters along its coast. From a photographic perspective, many of these indomitable landscapes were made famous through the viewfinder of Bradford Washburn’s Fairchild K-6 large format aerial camera. Throughout his prolific years Washburn climbed and photographed across vast swaths of Alaska and the Yukon with a vision deeply rooted in adventure and storytelling. He set a precedent for mountain photography that continues to speak volumes across the genre and will well into the future. But just as time ticks onward, the landscapes and those who move through them change. In Glacier: Bradford Washburn’s Mountain Photography Meets Contemporary Counterpart, Alex Joseph Hansen takes us on a visual journey from summit to the calving icebergs of Alaska’s greatest glaciers. Hansen cites Washburn as early inspiration for his pursuits in the mountains, but his own creative aesthetic drives the storyline behind the exhibition. With underlying tones of science, climate, and art, Hansen shares a sophisticated take on glacier systems as a whole and the narrative behind our planet’s mass exodus of ice.
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Alex Joseph Hansen
“I want my work to live at the nexus of science, storytelling, and art. I’ve learned that what I can do is share with people a part of the world that they are likely never to experience themselves. And to promote the idea that changes within these ecosystems drive impacts globally; what happens in Alaska and at the polar regions of the world affects people across all oceans. Similar to Washburn, I draw much of the influence of my work from the depths of the mountains, and similar to the mindset of Anatoli Boukreev, these spaces are where I practice my religion, whether that be climbing, photography, or something completely different. What matters is that I’m there and present. While my work and personal history is deeply rooted in mountain summits and vast ice fields I needed to extend it beyond that of the frozen arena. Below the summit is where snow and gravity dance to create ice, and that ice can run far and wide. But eventually that run comes to an end, be it through the shortcomings of the environment or that of a warming climate. From here, you have glacial watersheds, expansive forests, wetlands, oceans, and all of the life that relies on their healthy and sustainable connectedness. This body of work is a small purview into my own obsessive nature and hundreds of hours listening to the droning hum of a small fixed-wing aircraft. The result is a portfolio of photographs that show the raw dynamics of the glacial system and its counterparts, with the added hope of invoking a sense of curiosity about the mechanics of the world that allows us the opportunity to look past the superficial status of a ‘beautiful’ photograph and instead see these landscapes as a life source inherent to a positive future; and with the clarity needed to know they must be protected.”