Author: Sarah Laskow / Source: Atlas Obscura
High above a meltwater lake in Greenland, 3,000 or so feet from the ground, the plane tipped so that Tom Hegen could shoot straight down. The plane circled the lake to find the right angle and the right light, and then did it again.
“Up in the air, you have to be very quick,” says Hegen, a photographer based in Germany. Shooting aerial photographs from a plane is akin to trying to capture an image of an animal a quarter-mile away, from a car going 100 miles per hour.
But from the air, Hegen can see things that aren’t apparent from the ground. In his new series, Two Degrees Celsius, he captures the effects of climate change on the Arctic ice sheet extending over Greenland. In his photographs, blue water and white ice form abstract shapes at the places where the frozen north is melting away.
Hegen’s aerial photography explores the relationships between humans and the natural world, through images of salt ponds, tulip fields, coal mines, and commercial forests. From the ground, these places might give one impression—the forests, for instance, could be mistaken for a natural setting—with their true nature only revealed…
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