Tuvaq- Edge of the Ice

Far out on the ice, under the never-setting sun of Arctic spring, time evaporates. The mind calms and you begin to inhale the world around you: the cold, the wind, the ice, the quiet, the wait. But underneath the damper of stillness, life boils. Out on the tuvaq--the expansive interface of sea and ice--everything happens. On the tuvaq, the whale breaches. The walrus is harpooned. The maktaq is eaten. The hunters watch the horizon. We wait. There is no need for words. The mind is still. Tuvaq - Edge of the Ice is an exploration of the stillness and quiet mystery that envelopes and defines life on the sea ice.

Kiliii Yuyan is a National Geographic photographer, Explorer and speaker working in the polar regions and cold seas, among wildlife and the Indigenous communities at the edges of the inhabitable world. He has been stalked by a polar bear and dived with ancient Greenland sharks. Fifteen of his stories have run in National Geographic, three of them covers, and in 2023 the Society gave him the Eliza Scidmore Award for Outstanding Storytelling. The argument at the center of his work: the world's most beautiful places are beautiful because of the people who live in them.