North by Nuuk - Greenland after Rockwell Kent

Denis Defibaugh (b. 1955) lived and photographed in four communities in Greenland from April 2016 to July 2017: Nuuk the capital and largest city of 17,000, Sisimiut, Uummannaq and Illorsuit a settlement of 70 people of no cars or roads. The work produced is an intimate portrait of Greenland - beginning with exploration of the vast primal landscape, delving deeper into the social landscape and reaching the heart of the life in Greenland through intimate portraits of its people. This is the process of knowing Greenland. First experiencing the overwhelming landscape and then seeing the Inuit peoples place in that environment, and finally the acceptance by and interaction with the Greenlanders.

North by Nuuk, Greenland after Rockwell Kent connects photographer Denis Defibaugh and painter Rockwell Kent. Separated by nearly a century, they live and create in Greenland for nearly identical reasons: a magnetic fascination with the island, its people, and their shared histories. Defibaugh was drawn to Greenland because of its unrelenting and challenging winter weather, and inspired by Kent’s goal “to experience the Far North at its spectacular worst”.

The island nation’s political and civic organizations, its peoples’ work and play habits, unsurprisingly morph over time. Ever constant is Greenland’s sublime and sometimes unforgiving environment that has shaped and occasionally been shaped by its inhabitants. Through Defibaugh’s photography, human settlements and their responses to modernization, climate change, social change and continuity is explored based on cooperation, collaboration, and exchange with indigenous communities that have shared their local knowledge, memory and identity.

“My helicopter lifted off, whipped around Uummannaq Island, and headed north as we entered into the widest stretch of the Uummannaq Fjord. The stark white contrast of the massive sculpted icebergs spotted the deep cobalt blue of the fjord as small whitecaps created dimension within the rolling seawater’s surface. The mountainous snowcapped range of Greenland’s mainland could be seen to the east along with the seemingly infinite Greenland icecap, and to the west the southern tip of Ubekendt Ejland. As we sweep around the headlands into Illorsuit on the northeast end of the island, the broad sweeping mile-long horseshoe shaped black sand beach of Illorsuit came into view. After seven days of travel I was finally at my destination 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle” - Denis Defibaugh, June 1, 2016.

Interview: http://lenscratch.com/2019/07/denis-defibaugh-north-by-nuuk-greenland-a…

RIT Press publication