Alaska, USA by Dimitra Lavrakas
Alaska, USA

The pictures featured in this gallery are by Dimitra Lavrakas, you can see a portfolio of her images at here

The Arctic is not a “barren wasteland,” but a unique place in the world where ultimate freedom can be had by stepping off a gravel road and slogging across the tundra in any direction. I value the way in which the Arctic sharpened my senses – detecting the variations in the color white, whether to cross over a snow drift safely by listening to the squeak my pack boots made, or being prepared to go anywhere in any kind of weather. In summer, the tundra smells as sweet and teems with as much life as any garden: snowy owls dive for lemmings, the sound of a bumblebee is detectable at a quarter mile, and red phalaropes swim jerkily in ponds like ducks in a shooting gallery. But the Arctic’s natural balance is so delicate, so precarious. In 1994, when I was editor of the Newspaper The Arctic Sounder in Barrow, Alaska, Inupiaq Elder Sadie Brower Neakok told me the ice cellars, those chambers in the permafrost hand-chiseled over centuries, were melting, I didn’t really grasp the significance.
I do now.

Published Photography: Alaska Magazine, Alaska Business Monthly, Alaska Contractors’ Magazine, Arctic Sounder, Dutch Harbor Fisherman, Up Here Magazine, Anchorage Daily News, Associated Press , Chicago Tribune, National Geographic Traveler, San Francisco Examiner, Newsweek, Seattle Time and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Photography Exhibitions: August 1995: Rarefied Light, Alaska statewide traveling exhibit, May 2002: “The Light Up There: Small Adventures in the Arctic” Photography exhibit at The Haven Cafe, Skagway, Alaska. June-December 2002: “Skagway Artists in Winter,” Skagway Museum. Over a dozen photographs are in the museum’s permanent collection, as well as black and white portraits of Inupiat people from Barrow on display in the museum’s Arctic exhibit. July 2003: Photography for the book “Garden City of Alaska: An Illustrated History of Gardening in Skagway, Alaska.” March 2005: “Stars at My Feet,” twelve Alaska starfish photographs selected for the children’s room on the Alaska Marine Highway System’s fast ferry M/V Chenega. October 2005: “At the Lead,” Arctic Ocean scene, selected for statewide exhibit “Rarefied Light.” May 2008: “Concerning Climate Change: An Art & Science Collaboration,” Pratt Museum, Homer, Alaska May 2008: Selected to membership in the Polar Artists Group http://polarartists.com/index.html July 2008: Rarefied Light, Alaska statewide juried by David Hillier“Barrow Triptych: Arctic Coastline, Abandoned Home, Out of Service”