How do your projects evolve? Do you get commissioned to go out and take pictures, or do you simply start producing photographs?

I knew from the beginning that I was not good at having someone standing over my shoulder and saying, “We need a picture of this, and could you get it from this angle?” I’m not someone’s puppet. I needed to do what was interesting to me. So the way that it worked in my case — and I’ve discovered that for every photographer there’s a different way — it was all very serendipitous and based on my curiosity. Anything that I’m curious about, I just go, “Ooh, I’m going to go check that out.”

For example, Tibet. For many years, I saw bumper stickers on cars here in Berkeley: “Free Tibet.” But I didn’t really know what that meant. So one day I was just like, “That’s it, I’m fed up. I don’t understand what these stickers are about and I want to know.” I arranged to go to Tibet and get a sense of what was going on. And why “Free Tibet”? What does that mean? What are the issues? I ended up falling in love with the place. But, pursuing curiosity this way, I have pictures that go nowhere. Nothing has happened with the Tibet work yet, and I went every year for four years. That’s the other thing that I decided: I like long-term projects. I don’t like to just go in and do something for a couple of days or a week or so. I like things that take years.

Why years?

One of my mentors photographically is Steve McCurry, who’s a National Geographic photographer. He’s famous for the Afghan girl with the green eyes. I traveled with him in Tibet in 2004, and we became good friends, and I consider him my photographic father. He really took the time to remind me that photography really is all about being incredibly sensitive to quality of light. You can have the best composition, best subject, but if you want to have an image that is going to resonate for a long time, you have to have this sensitivity to light.

But one of the other things he said to me, which I find is true, is, “You can’t fake time,” in reference to people who do go in and make a couple of images and say, “Okay, that was the Iraq War,” in three days. You put that person’s work next to someone who has been in and out of Iraq for a decade or two or even three, and you’ll see just how many holes there are in the work that was done in just a few days or weeks. When you dedicate that much time to a project, things reveal themselves. You might go one time, and think, “Oh, this is the truth and this is reality and this is how I feel.” And that’s all you get. If you go back again, it may be the same, or you may realize, “Wow, I am experiencing something completely different.” So I think it’s really important to put time into something and not just do hit-and-run photography.

So did the polar work come about out of a sense of curiosity, too?

The polar work was really where I was called to do something unique. At the age of 32, this little switch came on inside me and I knew I wanted to be a photographer. That was what I was going to use to make a statement about life on this Earth and the importance of appreciating what we have here. With that intention, a lot of opportunities opened themselves to me. I lived in the jungle with some people in Panama, just documenting. I was really interested in cultures and people that were on the verge of a massive shift in their lives and their way of living. I really thought I was going to be a people photographer.

I showed that work to magazines. They said, “Oh, it’s too pretty. You should show this to art galleries.” So I showed it to galleries. And they said, “Oh, it’s too photojournalistic. You should go show this to magazines.” Feeling stuck in this place where my work was pretty but informative was at first a little frustrating, because people were trying to fit me into a box, and I was sad that they couldn’t see that there was more to what I did. But I wasn’t about to change to squeeze myself into one box or another.

At the same time, I was also showing some work that I took in the Arctic and Antarctic. I had gone initially as a tourist with my family, on a small icebreaker. I didn’t know what I was going to do with that work, but in 2006, I took it to a jury portfolio review, Review Santa Fe, and was accepted. A woman saw pictures of my icebergs. She said, “Wow, this is amazing. Do you have more of these?” I said, “I have about a thousand of those.” She said, “Make that into one body of work.” And that one piece of advice was brilliant.

So I packaged up a group of icebergs, and that was my first portfolio, called “The Last Iceberg.” Then, I entered the images in a book competition run by Photolucida, only hoping for exposure, not hoping to win. I ended up winning. From there, museums started calling me, magazines started calling me. It became this little snowball. I started getting exhibitions in museums. It just gained momentum, in part because in 2007, the UN announced that global warming was happening.

Why do you think your photos of icebergs resonate with people?

Of course, I knew I wasn’t the first person to photograph icebergs. But I think that the difference is, when I was standing in front of these icebergs, I wasn’t seeing them as just chunks of ice. To me, because of the way that I was raised as a Shinnecock, I was looking at life – not water frozen as ice. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I see icebergs as sentient beings, but each one was arranged in such a unique, individual way. I couldn’t help but see that each iceberg has its own personality, and each one reacts differently to its circumstances. When I photographed them, I had the intention and perspective of photographing them as though I were making a portrait. I think somehow that sense of aliveness is communicated through the images.

How worried were you at the time about global warming and the fact that they were melting? Did you feel that you were documenting something that was disappearing?

When I first went to the Arctic it was 1999. When I first went on a ship and saw sea ice was 2003. And the first time I was in Antarctica and saw an iceberg was 2004. During this time, there had been rumblings and rumors of “This is all melting. It’s not going to be here,” but because I had only had a couple of years’ exposure, I only knew that I wanted to document what was.

I wasn’t necessarily thinking about “This is all going to be gone.” It was much more serendipitous and intuitive and instinctual. It was just, “Here I am, and I’m going to make images that reflect how I feel being here. ” So I did that. The polar regions are a place that you either love or you hate, there’s no in-between. And for me it was instant love. It’s a place of extreme solitude, and at the same time there is also this profound sense that I could really feel my connection to it all when I was there. It’s a very powerful experience to be so isolated, so vulnerable, so exposed and at the same time feel so absolutely interconnected. I was hoping that the images I was making were going to communicate that.

It wasn’t until 2007 did I start to hear the words climate change and global warming and then think, Hmmm, how does that fit with my work?

So what was the turning point for you?

In 2006, I was given a National Geographic Award — a small amount of money and their stamp of approval. This got me passage on a Russian icebreaker on the far side of Antarctica for over a month-long expedition. What was cool was this was a proper working icebreaker, so it has two helicopters, which meant we could fly to places you can’t get to by ship. We flew to the Dry Valleys and we flew to Shackleton’s hut and Scott’s hut. And to be inside those places — you could smell history. It was just that beautiful old smell of leather. And this was almost 100 years to the day that they had been there.

It was so moving for me, because who would think that just a hundred years after all of this incredible explorative history of mostly white men, that a woman, a Native woman, a black American — I’ve ticked every checkbox of minority there is, almost — could be standing in that place? Mount Erebus, which is this big volcano, is always steaming. It looks identical to the images that Ponting and Hurley made a hundred years ago. It was just so incredible to be in there and see their sleeping bags. They left everything — all their science equipment is there, newspapers, food they didn’t eat, a lot of Hershey’s chocolate. I was deeply moved.

How did this expedition change your perspective?

When those people traveled over a hundred years ago, they felt very small as humans. And perception-wise, the Earth happened to us and we could only bear it. And within a hundred years, just a hundred years, we’ve spun that on its side. Now humans, who seemed so insignificant, are affecting the whole planet with our activities. I really started to feel that difference of how much had changed in a hundred years and what a slippery slope we were on.

When I speak publicly, I try to avoid using the terms climate change and global warming, primarily because maybe now after 10 years my work is a record of a period of time that was quite critical — sort of the tipping point. But as I was doing it, my message and purpose were more about showing people places that we were taking for granted. Now they’ve become these images of what we’re losing, or what we’ve already lost. I suspect in 10, 20, 50 years from now, people will look at those images and say, “Wow, the Earth was like that once?” So what the images mean while I made them has already started to change now that I feel like I’m finished with that project.

Do feel like you’re done with the icebergs, then?

Actually, I’m currently writing a grant to join a small group that sends around a dozen artists on a little ship to Svalbard, in the Arctic. The first time I went to Svalbard was in 2003. It was there, really, that I fell in love with the sea ice and that environment. I decided, how cool would it be to end where I began a decade later, because it’ll be 2013? I want to call it “Full Circle,” and I want to revisit the images that I made in 2003 and rephotograph them: this is what it looked like 10 years ago, this is what it looks like now.

I think it would be a really great way for me personally to finish. When I left the Arctic in 2011 in August, I knew — I could feel it, I could see it — that that tipping point that we’d all been talking about, the threshold, was breached, and it is no longer about whether we can avoid this. It is now a new paradigm. And honestly, I was heartbroken, crying a lot, because it was so dramatic. There was no snow. It was, most days, 60 degrees. We were less than 500 miles from the North Pole. There were polar bears everywhere on land because there was no ice. I observed polar bears destroying bird colonies because they were so hungry, they were just going from nest to nest eating the eggs. These birds had traveled thousands of miles to lay their eggs and raise their chicks. So this one bear, in a couple of hours, absolutely devastated a whole generation of eggs. Glaucous gulls, kitty wakes, eider ducks, king eider ducks. It was a devastating scene.

And Svalbard is also the place where the Global Seed Vault is, where world crop biodiversity is being stored. It’s really interesting that you’re going up there to document the fact that we’ve breached the tipping point, and exactly at that spot is the ark.

Exactly.

How did your experiences as a young person growing up between cultures influence your life path as a passionate and intrepid photographer?

A lot of people would say that the things that have happened to me in life were bad. For example, I grew up as part of a mixed marriage. My father’s American Indian and my mother is black and Italian. That in itself is a conflict, because my mother was Roman Catholic and my father really worshipped the Earth as this living, breathing thing. I was told to hold a tree and feel it moving very slowly, but that it had a life force moving in it, and it just moved at a different pace, but it had life.

When my parents divorced, my mother got custody of us, and being Roman Catholic, she decided it was time to, and I quote, “Christianize her heathen halfbreed children.” It became a very different experience. And I did not gel well with the hypocrisy that was so entrenched in practicing what I saw in Christianity.

So probably starting at the age of 10, I spent more time alone in my room drawing and making art than playing outside. I knew how to be alone with myself and how to create things. By the time I was 15, things were terrible with my mother. I couldn’t take it anymore, and I left. At the time, I was going to the High School of Music and the Arts, the Fame high school. That was in Manhattan and I went to stay with my grandmother, who lived on Long Island. I had to get up at 4:30am to make it to school on time. It was a ridiculous commute. I was falling behind. I started to spend the nights sleeping on different friends’ couches. I got odd jobs, including working at a one-hour photo lab, so I was looking at images every day.

Because the school recognized that I was at risk – I was essentially homeless, although I’ve never, until this moment, actually called myself that – they gave me a Nikkormat camera and taught me how to bulk load film and develop it. But they didn’t teach me how to use a camera. They said, “You have to figure that out on your own. Go and photograph your experience.” And I did. It became my outlet emotionally to record everything that was going on in my life, my friends, the things we were doing. We were a bunch of punk rockers, so lots of adventures and misadventures. I have all those pictures. I didn’t realize it, of course, at the time, but that probably saved my life, to give me that camera and give me a way to vent my anger, frustration and emotions in a creative way.

These little things may not seem like much, but they were the seeds.

You pursued your career while your daughter was very small, sometimes taking her with you and sometimes leaving her behind for months. Is it difficult?

Whenever I speak about my work, there’s always one woman in the audience who criticizes me for leaving my daughter for months at a time. But I say, what kind of mother would I be NOT to do what I do? How can I say to her, “Live your dreams, be what you want to be, but I can’t, because I have to put my needs behind everyone else’s”? I feel that it would really be hypocritical. We’ve been quite lucky. She’s traveled with me since she was two-weeks-old, and we’ve been to probably a hundred countries. She’d been on all seven continents before she was 7, and saw her first polar bear in the Arctic when she was 3. And it shows in her personality — she’s really comfortable with who she is.

I was raised to be a questioner and an explorer, and that’s the example I want to set. Serendipitously, everything in my life has aligned in such a way to build me to be how I am so that I can do what I do and I see the world the way I do. In leaving home, I was able to learn that there’s always another way, that anything’s possible. I’ve become a master of the possible. If I want to go to Siberia, I’d get there, and I have. If I want to go anywhere, I know I can go. It’s not a matter of how, it’s just a matter of do I want to do it right now and why.

My grandfather, a Shinnecock Indian, raised me to know that you cannot be a whole person without touching — we call it touching, but it means experience — the four directions. And the four directions represent your innocence, they represent your wisdom, they represent growth, they represent the sacred. And you must, if you want to grow into a full — or what we call beautiful — human being, you have to visit these directions. Whether you take that literally, like I have, to travel, or in some more local way, one must experience. And so I honor that by doing what I do — by being open to experience and possibility.

How has being a TED Fellow had an impact on your life and work?

I not only see that so much more is possible, but I feel so much more capable of doing it! And being a TED Fellow has had such a profound and tangible impact: not just the exposure of my work to the world, but by including me in a group of peers who push the envelope of what is possible — with courage and integrity. I feel that I have found a positive motivator. I can look across the table and say to myself, “Look what amazing things these incredible individuals have done. What, Camille, are you going to contribute?”

For anyone watching the three presidential debates between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, two words were surprisingly absent: “climate change.” It’s a strange omission given that 73 percent of Americans shared in a recent poll that dealing with environmental concerns, particularly global warming, was “extremely important” or “very important” to them. Not to mention that just four years ago, in the 2008 election, almost every candidate spoke to the dangers of global warming.

In a Frontline special called “Climate of Doubt,” journalist John Hockenberry (who gave the recent TEDTalk “We are all designers” and interviewed sculptor Tom Shannon for “The painter and the pendulum”) looks at the rise of the climate change skeptics movement, which promotes the idea that manmade climate change is a hoax. Hockenberry interviews several leaders of the movement, including Myron Ebell, Tim Phillips and S. Fred Singer, and explores how the movement has managed to virtually erase the words “climate change” from the political dialogue.

Hockenberry spent the past year doing research for this documentary, and it is both fascinating and chilling. The full report can be seen on Frontline’s website. And tomorrow, Oct. 25 at 2pm (EST), Hockenberry will take part in a live online conversation about it, along with Catherine Upin (who produced the report) and Elizabeth Kolbert (a New Yorker writer who focuses on climate change). They are welcoming any and every question.

With just three weeks to go before the 2012 presidential election in the US, eyes around the world are on the contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. As shown in last night’s debate, the election may well come down to a few key issues. So what matters most to Americans? The TED Blog read this Gallup poll on the issues that citizens want the next president to prioritize. Conveniently, these are topics that speakers often address on the TED stage. So, every week until the election, we’ll bring you a new playlist focusing on one of the top-rated issues.

One of the most significant issues for Americans is concern for the environment – specifically, curbing the rapid rate of global warming. In this poll, 73 percent of Americans said that this was an “extremely important” or “very important” priority from their perspective.

To help spur some thinking — and maybe even inspire some action — we’ve compiled some of our most striking talks about the environment.

Al Gore warns on latest climate trends
In this talk from TED2009, Al Gore delivers jarring facts about global warming with footage of ice caps melting in real-time and rising water levels throughout the world. He debunks the myth of “clean” coal and presents truly clean alternatives.

Capt. Charles Moore on the seas of plastic
“Let’s talk trash,” says Capt. Charles Moore. In this talk, also from TED2009, he illustrates how we are living in a “throwaway” society with a plastic addiction. Tracking the migration of our trash, we find that they end up in massive patches of waste in the ocean that then washes onto our shores.

Vicki Arroyo: Let’s prepare for our new climate
Vicki Arroyo knows it is important to be realistic when it comes to climate change. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2012, she says that we need to start preparing for the dangerous effects now, as farmers’ dry spells are leading to threats of national security all around the world. Here, she shows examples of proper preparation, from communities who haven’t ignored the need to adapt.

Richard Sears: Planning for the end of oil
While we’re on the topic of adapting to the climate crisis, Richard Sears lays out a plan to prepare for the inevitable extinction of oil. At TED2010, he expresses the need for innovation that will take us from this age to the next.

Tristram Stuart: The global food waste scandal
In this compelling talk from TEDSalon London Spring 2012, Tristam Stuart takes us through his crusade against food waste, which began when he was 15-years-old and trying to feed his pig. The key to combating our global food hemorrhage, he says, is to make it socially unacceptable to waste food.

Dan Phillips: Creative houses from reclaimed stuff
Dan Phillips is a master of recycling. Making beautiful homes from others’ garbage, he takes us through the rooms he built from soda cans, items found in antique stores, and even eggshells. At TEDxHouston 2010, Phillips describes the social forces that lead us to pollute instead of reuse.

Lucianne Walkowicz: Look up for a change
Lucianne Walkowicz directs our eyes sky-wards in this talk from TEDxPhoenix. As she describes the dangers of light pollution, she shows us the swiftly declining beauty of space — a thing we don’t even realize we are missing out on.

Jason Clay: How big brands can help save biodiversity
In this talk from TEDGlobal 2010, Jason Clay explains that, in our consumer culture, corporations actually have a lot of power to do good. Through transformation, he assists big companies in revamping their structures in order to make more with less — a resource-friendly approach.

Graham Hill: Why I’m a weekday vegetarian
Ever unsuccessfully tried to be a vegetarian? Graham Hill has too. In this talk from TED2010, he shares why he became a “weekday veg” — to help stem the harmful environmental impacts of eating meat, without having to go all the way. With this strategy, Graham cuts his meat intake by 70 percent, and still gets a burger when he really wants one.

Natalie Jeremijenko: The art of the eco-mindshift
Natalie Jeremijenko is head of the xDesign Environmental Health Clinic at NYU – whose purpose is to give patients prescriptions to heal their environments. At Business Innovation Factory, she shares how this effort to combine public art and engineering is addressing environmental issues.

Vicki Arroyo knows a thing or two about climate change. A lawyer by training, she is the executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center, which works on policies to help government leaders (and the world) deal with climate change’s inevitable disruptions. But that’s not the only reason she’s familiar with climate change. As she tells us, she also grew up in New Orleans, devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a disaster in which 1,836 people died, nearly 300,000 homes were lost, and in which her mother and sister were caught up. They were able to get away in time, but their homes — with everything in them — were destroyed.

Other parts of world have been hit by storms in devastating ways, too. And scientists tell us we’re in for more extreme weather, fueled in part by record-breaking temperatures. As we move toward an ice-free planet, as our glaciers disappear, many sources of drinking and irrigation water and hydropower are disappearing. “What,” she asks, “will happen to the millions who depend on them when that’s gone?”

Melting glaciers and intense storms are just two impacts of climate change. While some are still in denial, the evidence is undeniable. In fact, she says, we may have already reached a tipping point. “Climate change is already affecting our homes, our communities, our ways of life,” she says. “This talk is about how we adapt.”

One positive? The changes that are under way will largely manifest at a local level, meaning that we can all play an active role. She quotes the Bob Dylan anthem, bravely singing the punchline: “The times they are a-changin’.”

So what can we do? How can we prepare and adapt? She looked at three specific areas of change:

Adapting to storms and floods
Rebuild better. In New Orleans, Interstate 10 has been rebuilt 21 feet higher to cope with storm surges. Brad Pitt and Make It Right have designed and built raised, energy-efficient homes. “Even the church my mother attends has been rebuilt higher, and is poised to become the first Energy Star church in the country,” she says. “Thanks to solar panels, reflective paint and more, their electricity bill in March was $48.”

While technology is important, the human element is even more critical. Many of those affected by Katrina refused to leave, because the evacuation vehicles didn’t allow them to take their pets with them. “Imagine leaving your own pets behind,” she says. In the US, the 2006 Pet Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act (PETS) removed the need to make that agonizing choice.

Preparing for heat and drought
Heatwaves killed tens of thousands of people in western Europe in 2003, and in Russia in 2010. In Ethiopia, 70% of the population depends on rainfall for its livelihood. Arroyo describes a project sponsored by Oxfam, SwissRe and the Rockefeller Foundation to help farmers build hillside terraces and conserve water. Stability gives farmers confidence to invest and helps them become more productive. “It’s a virtuous cycle that can be replicated throughout the developing world,” she says.

Interesting initiatives are taking place in the U.S., led by Chicago and Washington DC, which last year became a leader in green roofs, funded in part by a 5 cent tax on plastic bags. They split the costs with home and building owners and the result is tamped down heat, reduced emissions, and reduced stormwater runoff. A “win win win,” she says.

Adapting to rising seas
“Sealevel rise threatens coastal ecosystems, agriculture, major cities.” She shows what might happen to San Francisco airport with 16 inches of flooding. It’s not pretty. And there are other effects of rising seas too. Already, San Francisco is spending $40 million to retrofit its water and sewer systems. If those pipes are flooded with saltwater, that would cause backups at the plant and harm bacteria needed to treat the waste.

Again, she urges us to think beyond technical solutions, and shows a picture of raised ventilation grates in New York City to show that solutions can be both attractive and functional. “Designers can integrate the natural environment with climate change in mind,” she says.

Then she sounds a note of caution. “Adaptation is too important to be left to the experts. Why? There are no experts. We’re entering uncharted territory, yet our expertise is based on the past,” she says. The thing is, we can’t rely on established norms any more. Times are a-changin’.”It’s up to us to look at our homes, our communities, our vulnerabilities, our exposures to risks, to find way not just to survive but to thrive. It’s up to us to plan, prepare and call on leaders to do the same even as they address the underlying causes of climate change.”

“There are no quick fixes, no one-size-fits-all solutions. It’s all learning by doing, but the operative word is doing,” she continues. “Adaptation will not be painless and it won’t be perfect, but inaction — no action — is not an option.”

And with that, Arroyo closes her thought-provoking presentation by returning to New Orleans, describing the jazz funeral and its shift from sadness and mourning to celebration and dancing. (It’s illustrated with a picture of her mom, dancing in her wheelchair with the Tremé brass band.) And she concludes, “Just as New Orleans and my people survived adversity in Hurricane Katrina, we can all be open to the radical and, yes, sometimes wrenching changes that climate change will bring. We can work together to protect the cultures and the people that each of us holds most dear.” Lovely.

Photos: James Duncan Davidson