The Shrinking Community Living on the Icy Edge of the Earth

Camille Michel captures the surreal beauty of a community on the edge of civilization.

Uummannaq, Greenland is tiny, remote, and cold. The town is located on an island almost 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle, and its 1,300 or so residents live in a world as barren as it is beautiful. Photographer Camille Michel documents this dwindling community living at the edge of civilization in her series The Last Men.

The village is shrouded by the famous 3,800-foot Uummannaq Mountain, surrounded by the sea and blanketed in snow. Temperatures can drop to 50 below zero, and reaching the tiny town is a challenge. Michel spent two days making the trip, which included a helicopter ride, and though she didn’t speak the language (Kalaallisut and some Danish), the community immediately took her in.

"The people are very welcoming when you show interest in them," she says. "One man didn’t understand why I was taking his picture, but he wasn’t bothered about it."

Her work highlights the lunar-like landscape, one imbued with a still, cold silence. In her photos, people are set against a limitless horizon, often working alone. The 250-year-old community is seen as a collection of colorful dots on a white hillside, its haphazard dumping ground and cemetery just out of sight. Michel presents a series that is at once documentary and literary. "I often speak of 'poetic document' to characterize my work," she says. "I consider the photograph like a poet using his own experiences to describe the world."

The Last Men is borrowed from a book by Maurice Blanchot. Though not a direct reference, it hints at the town’s struggle to stay alive. Uummannaq traditions and way of life are slowly, inexorably changing. The town has for generations sustained itself on the ocean, which are increasingly threatened by climate change. Ice that used to be a meter or more thick is now but a few centimeters thick in places, and cannot support the dogsleds that carry men to the fishing grounds. Increasingly, villagers rely upon food brought in from the world beyond.

They also worry about their youth leaving for the cities to the south. "The new generation is totally different," Michel says. "The youngsters want to be fashionable. They’re looking for a more modern life, they don’t want to be fishers or hunters anymore. They prefer their headset to the silence of the ice field."

Michel returned from a second trip in February and hopes to turn her project into a book. She wants to spent more time in the community, documenting Ummannaq as the town, and its residents, move forward. "I don’t know if the story will end," she says. "I hope 'the last men' will resist."

The Last Men will be at the Biennale d’art contemporain in Mulhouse, France in June. It will also be part of the Expo Milano 2015 in Italy.