Reframing the Last Frontier: Subhankar Banerjee and the Visual Politics of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Abstract

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land. Organized by the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, September 13–December 31, 2003. Exhibition Curator: Gail H. Hull. Designers: Diane Dias and Linda Kulik. New Mexico Museum of Natural History, Albuquerque, February 7–May 9, 2004; Harvard Museum of Natural History, Cambridge, Mass., June 5–September 12, 2004; Colorado Mountain Club, Golden, October 9, 2004–January 9, 2005; The Field Museum, Chicago, February 5–May 8, 2005; Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, University of Washington, Seattle, June 24–December 31, 2005; John Carroll University, University Heights, Ohio, February 4–May 7, 2006; University of Alaska Museum, Fairbanks, June 16–September 10, 2006. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land. By Subhankar Banerjee. Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 2003. 176 pages. $39.95 (cloth). $29.95 (paper). "Cast your eyes on this," implored Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat from California, as she stood on the Senate floor and showed her colleagues a picture of a polar bear (fig. 1).1 A clear blue sky delineates the top of the image, while below, a polar bear lumbers across the ice, its large white figure strikingly reflected in the water. Taken by Subhankar Banerjee in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the photograph, according to Boxer, offered compelling visual evidence as to why drilling should not take place in this remote Alaskan landscape. President George W. Bush and leading Republicans hoped to open the region to oil development, but Boxer maintained that such actions would threaten the habitat of the polar bear and other Arctic creatures. So on March 19, 2003, in the midst of a heated debate, she continued [End Page 159] to display Banerjee's photographs and to urge her fellow senators to vote in favor of an amendment to prevent drilling. Just before the vote was taken, Boxer held up a copy of the photographer's book, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land, and recommended that everyone visit an exhibition of Banerjee's "breathtaking" photographs, soon to open at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.2 The Senate, much to the dismay of the Bush administration, approved Boxer's amendment by a vote of 52 to 48, thus forestalling, at least temporarily, plans to drill in ANWR. Click for larger view Figure 1 Subhankar Banerjee, Polar Bear, Bernard Harbor.