‘As Greenland’s glaciers melt, Louisiana’s waters rise — ice is the keeper of deep time’

Anne McClintock teaches English at Princeton University. A writer and photographer, she tells Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke about her work which chronicles climate change from Iceland to America:

Please tell us about your studies of the Anthropocene?

My work engages with four of the great planetary crises of our times — the melting of the glaciers, the rising of the oceans, the mass displacements of people, other species and land itself and global militarisation, the latter, a large institutional cause of global warming. In my writing and photography, I try to make visible the invisible circuits that connect these four crises. I take photographs also because the planetary crisis is now a problem of perception. It’s not so much about precision because its data is steadily coming in. We are facing a crisis of the imagination now — our senses cannot comprehend the magnitude of these changes. My work attempts to embody these unfolding catastrophes. I engage with people in the drowning wetlands of Louisiana and, almost 4,000 miles away, the melting glaciers of Greenland and Iceland.

FROM THAW TO DELUGE: Anne McClintock’s pictures capture how, as vast, epochal glaciers facing global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions melt in Greenland (Above), waters in Louisiana rise (Below), drowning entire landscapes and sustainable ways of life, making climate change a geological and cultural loss. Image courtesy: Anne McClintock

What links these places and changes?

I was in Iceland some years ago, standing on a frozen ice shelf in a volcanic cave when a torrent of freezing water roared past me. It reminded me of a day I was driving in Louisiana to the Isle de Jean Charles. This island is sinking and its inhabitants are termed the first federally funded climate refugees in the United States. A thin road connects the island to the world. It was a sunny day when I was driving but suddenly, a wave washed over the road. Another wave did so and within minutes, I was in my car, surrounded by water — this is water which moved from Greenland, scientific evidence showing how the melting of ice in the north, the Arctic, has a greater impact on rising waters in the Southern hemisphere while the Antarctic has more impact on the Northern Hemisphere.

Louisiana is thus the first disappearing land on Earth with its rapidly rising seas — in one hour, area the size of a football field goes under water. The isle’s inhabitants are mostly from the Biloxi-Chitima-cha-Choctaw Native American tribe. Their forebears were forced to move there in the 19th century by the Indian Removal Act, a colonial cataclysm in which thousands of Native Indians were driven off their lands. They moved into these lush wetlands where they lived entirely self-sustaining lives. But, in the 1920s, oil companies arrived and ravaged the marshes. Then, the seas began to rise and inhabitants must now move because of frequent hurricanes, the ruined marshes unable to buffer them, and the land itself sinking. This island, once the size of Manhattan, is now about two miles long and a quarter-mile wide — with the next hurricane, it could be gone.

UNBRAIDED WATER: Melting glaciers form lagoons which fan out over plains. ‘Ice Rivers’, Courtesy: Anne McClintock


The question of ice began when I was travelling in a plane over Greenland. I saw its beauty but something also seemed wrong. I took photo- graphs and later realised I’d captured the Great Melt of 2012, when 97% of Greenland’s surface thawed. I understood this phenomenon, also caused by fossil fuel burning, was linked to Louisiana. Such ice is important ice sheets are the giant mirrors of the planet which cool Earth by reflecting the sun’s heat. As humans heat Earth, white ice is melting faster, darkening and absorbing more heat. As this ice melts into the oceans, the seas rise and further warm, the melting of Greenland thus called the greatest geological change to reshape Earth.

Second, ice is history crystalised ice is the keeper of deep time, freezing the past in crypts, holding ancient air in tiny frozen bubbles. This is a unique record of Earth’s history, a frozen fragment of braille which makes the deep past legible. Studying this, scientists can see the ash of ancient volcanoes, discern past meteor strikes and traces of the Industrial Revolution. With such research, scientists have established that ancient climates also changed very fast — and catastrophically.

When I was in Iceland, I felt I was seeing climate change take place literally before my eyes. Everywhere, there was water rushing, pouring, melting, dripping as the glaciers thawed — this gushed into huge lagoons with icebergs. These spread across vast plains in an extraordinarily beautiful braid-like network, until the glacier finally vanished in the sea.

A PIECE OF TIME: Thawing glaciers produce icebergs rich with Earth’s history . ‘Iceberg’, Courtesy: Anne McClintock

Which is your most moving photo yet?

The portraits I’ve taken of the Louisiana islanders moved me deeply. I heard them describe how earlier, they rode horses in forests which stood where the water is now. They were remembering constantly, living in what I call ‘grief in waiting’, the sadness of losing their world. Flying over Greenland, I also felt incredible intimacy with both the marshlands and ice. It seemed these landscapes were somehow animal and animate upon leaving the plane, I found my cheeks damp. I realised I had been crying at seeing such beauty and loss.

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