For over forty years, Ragnar Axelsson has traveled the frozen wilderness of Greenland, documenting the lives of Inuit – hunters and families living on the edge of the inhabited world. Friendship and trust are key to documenting their lives. Their world is rarely told. What emerges is an intimate picture of a world that few outsiders have ever witnessed from the inside.

In the isolated bay of Scoresbysund, Greenland, lies the village of Ittoqqortoormiit. There, survival has always depended on hunting, where danger lurks at every turn. Hunters often travel for days across sea ice in darkness and storms, and mistakes can be fatal. This is one of the most dangerous livelihoods on earth. Polar bears are moving closer to the villages. The ice is forming later each year and disappearing earlier. Small hunting communities are fighting for survival.

Working with black-and-white images, Ragnar cuts the Arctic down to its raw essence: ice, wind, darkness, animals, mountains and human faces. His photographs carry both beauty and menace. They speak of resilience, loss, dignity and a way of life under pressure from an outside world that sometimes wants to tell others how to live.

This is Greenland as the reality of a fast-changing world of smaller settlements. A place of unique beauty and constant danger. A world that is melting before our eyes.A world where the silence speaks.