“There is something inexplicable about the Arctic that speaks to you, a force that draws you to it like a magnet,” writes the Icelandic photographer Ragnar Axelsson in the catalogue that accompanies a new exhibition of his photographs. Axelsson’s shots capture people and place in windswept black-and-white images, blurring the point where the remote landscapes of Greenland, Iceland, and Siberia end and their inhabitants—the Inuits and their loyal sled dogs, for instance—begin. Today, any celebration of the world’s natural beauty is simultaneously a warning bell about its perilous state, and this exhibition is no different. —J.V.

Ragnar Axelsson: Where the World is Melting
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Reykjavík Art Museum / Reykjavík / Art
Reykjavík Art Museum / Reykjavík / Art
One hundred fifty of Ragnar Axelsson’s photographs are collected in Arctic Heroes: A Tribute to the Sled Dogs of Greenland, published by Kehrer Verlag
© Ragnar Axelsson
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