A lifetime near the Arctic gives this award winner an edge
|  | Saturday, April 30, 2022 | | | | |
 | PHOTOGRAPHS BY ACACIA JOHNSON
| | By Whitney Johnson, Director of Visual and Immersive Experiences
“There seem to be two things that drive photographer Acacia Johnson’s work: curiosity and magic,” said Mallory Benedict, a Nat Geo photo editor, at the International Center of Photography Infinity Awards this week.
Acacia, a Nat Geo photographer, won the Documentary Practice and Photojournalism award, while fellow Nat Geo photographer Esther Horvath (whose obsession with remote regions I’ve shared with you before) was honored as the Emerging Photographer. I also was struck by the work of another winner, Sky Hopinka, who brought a fresh look at climate change and our world in the Art category.
Acacia’s photographs—from a remote Inuit village (above) to faraway Alaskan landscapes, to deep inside ice caves, to the darkness of the polar regions—transport us to places we may never see with our own eyes. Instead of simply showing us what she sees, Acacia uses photography to give us a sense of what a place feels like–and that’s the true power of photography. That’s the magic.
“My favorite pictures,” Acacia says, “are ones where people stop to figure out what they're seeing.” The images that make you think, look more closely to try to understand.
Mine, too.
For an introduction to Acacia, check out her autobiographical story on how her family has worked to keep Alaska’s wilds pristine.
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| | At home: Pictured above, Acacia’s self-portrait (left) and her mother, Leslie Johnson (right), a former brown bear guide, in the lupine fields on the Alaska Peninsula, where the family camped. “In the summers of their 20s, my parents built and ran one of Alaska’s first bear-viewing lodges on the peninsula’s Pacific coast. … they came to know more than 20 bears as individuals,” Acacia wrote. | | | |
| | Keeping the kids close: A female known as T Bear nurses her year-old cubs in the tidal flats of Alaska’s McNeil River State Game Sanctuary and Refuge. Augustine Volcano, which last erupted in 2006, is in the background. As many as 80 bears have been seen at once in the refuge, Acacia said in this Nat Geo story. | | | |
| | It’s more than baking bread: In a frigid, challenging homeland, how do you keep Inuit traditions alive—and maintain ancestral knowledge about survival? Pictured above, Inuit elder Tagoonak Qavavauq teaches children how to make a bread called bannock. In this story, Acacia shows how a new generation, facing food insecurity and poor nutrition, is learning traditions of self-sufficiency. | | | |
| Sanctuary: At sunrise, Pacific walruses approach the shore to join a haul-out on Alaska’s remote Round Island. Since the sanctuary was established in 1960, a summer program has allowed small groups of visitors to camp on the island and observe walruses. Acacia was transfixed. “Watching them—their different colors, their battle scars, their antics—reminds me that all animals are individuals, with personalities, emotions, and empathy,” Acacia writes.
Read and see the full story. Trust me—you’ll be transported.
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 | PHOTOGRAPH BY LUISA DÖRR
| | Skateboarding for dignity: How does a group of young women skateboarders express support for the often overlooked or dismissed Indigenous women of Bolivia? By adopting traditional dress as they sail and jump through the sidewalks and parks of Bolivian cities, Nat Geo reports. (Pictured above, María Belén Fajardo Fernández, a physiotherapy student and the youngest in the group.)
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| EARTH MONTH: ARTICLE OF THE DAY | |
| | Bargain: That’s the Salvadoran slang translation of La Cachada, the name of an all-female theater troupe in San Salvador. In a nation that often buries its memories of civil war, more recent violence, poverty, and mental illness, La Cachada begins difficult conversations and provides an emotional release. Nat Geo has reported on another issue in the Central American nation, the attempt of migrants deported home to start over. | | | |
 | PHOTOGRAPH BY LYNSEY ADDARIO
| | Night of nights: A group of Bosnian American Muslim women socialize after singing at a gathering in Chicago to commemorate Ramadan’s Laylat al-Qadr. Under Islamic belief, Qadr Night is when the first verses of the Quran were revealed to the Prophet Muhammad more than 1,400 years ago. Photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Lynsey Addario captured this image of the women, members of a singing group called Chor Nur, for this Nat Geo story on Ramadan.
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| This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard, Jen Tse, and Monica Williams. Amanda Williams-Bryant, Rita Spinks, Alec Egamov, and Jeremy Brandt-Vorel also contributed this week. Have an idea or a link? We’d love to hear from you at david.beard@natgeo.com. | | | |
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