Many photographers make it their mission to document "things that will soon be gone forever", but few go to lengths quite so extreme as Ragnar Axelsson. In an article for The Photographic Index, a new site founded with an objective "to explore photography as a cultural force", former LIFE editor-in-chief Bill Shapiro spoke to the Icelander about his extraordinary practice.
A passion that began (as it has for many) with the likes of Eugene Smith, Ernst Haas and Henri Cartier-Bresson became an obsession, and for the last 40 years Axelsson has been taking pictures in the Arctic, battling against elemental forces, isolation and extreme cold. At one point, he reveals, he came very close to losing a thumb to frostbite.
Axelsson is fond of photographing those who live and work in these inhospitable conditions, but also concerned to capture the impacts of global warming on this most sensitive of environments. The Arctic is, he claims, "incredibly beautiful" - something that his arresting black-and-white images underline - but that beauty is increasingly under threat.
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