It’s been a year since I went on a trip that changed my life.
I boarded an ice-breaker on the West coast of Greenland and journeyed for 18 days all the way up to 81 latitude near the North Pole in the Canadian High Arctic with and a group of 10 incredible people.
There is a pre-Arctic me.
There is a post-Arctic me.
And in-between those two versions of myself is the me that I am convinced is still there, in the Arctic, floating on a ghost-ship, wandering the decks at night.
It took me this long to be able to actually really go through the photos and videos I filmed while there because the last year has been one of the hardest, loneliest, scariest, and strangest in terms of my career and my personal life.
And while I have published a handful of my Arctic photos already and even had a brief gallery showing with Commander Hadfield (my goodness what a bizarre sentence to write), I hadn’t yet digested the full meaning of what everything meant on many levels: on a personal level, on an Earth level, on a profound, philosophical level.
The Arctic was one of the best experiences of my life and I knew it while I was there. That was the surreal aspect of it.
I even talked about it in the moment at 81 degrees latitude (which somehow over 33,000 people have watched, how? why? !…):
When you know that what you are experiencing is a peak and is something so incredibly profound and that it is creating a seismic shift in your soul, it’s one of the heaviest and bittersweet feelings.
The truth is that I am still trying to put this trip into words.
And I feel like just now, a year later, I am ready to go through the photos. There are hundreds I haven’t even touched in terms of editing and writing about.
It’s as if a whole chapter of my life is sitting unread in a book that has been weighed down with an anchor of circumstance.
I would be lying if I said that I didn’t think of this trip often especially as of late.
There is a truth I keep coming back to over and over again.
I was the happiest I have ever been in my life on that trip.
This was while standing on the deck of the Kapitan Khlebnikov as the first snow of the trip started to fall as we waited to board zodiacs (small rafts) to go on an adventure.
That look? That’s not one I see on my face often.
That’s pure joy.
I may never, ever be in a position where I am with (who is one of the most exceptional humans I have ever spent time with) and a truly phenomenal group of people as the ones I was with and with a ship crew that made me come full circle with my family history (more about that in a later post) and an expedition crew that sincerely helped me get through some of my deepest fears (via ).
But I have these photos and videos and memories forever.
And while I know that part of me is still there in the Arctic, the part of me that is here that is struggling to know what’s next can’t stop thinking about the impact that the Arctic had on me as I wonder how to turn that impact into another chapter of my life and career.
I don’t have those answers to what my next chapter is yet but I can share the story of this particular chapter finally starting with some of the self-portraits I took over the course of the trip.
I take photos of myself to mark time.
I am fascinated, appalled, and tantalized by the ebb and flow of mortality.
Like this moment in the morning when the sun touched the Greenlandic waters and a heavy wind rushed through the fjord.
Time disappeared completely on this trip.
Temporal matters mattered less and less by the day as the midnight sun lingered on the horizon for hours bathing us in a near permanent twilight.
If anything, I took these just to remember how I felt in these moments: alive, having contemplated the deep losses of my life every night on the fly-bridge: lost loves, lost beginnings, lost ends that I relinquished to the cold night winds that caressed my face.
And here I was - a creature on this planet wind-burnt, hair full of snow and icy-whispers, freckles like pepper sunlight.
In a cold dream of an Earth star, the sun skips along an infinite horizon.
I would ponder the significance of life, grasping towards the wind that whipped through my hair, feeling small tossed about on an ocean of ice before going back to my cabin.
By the end of the trip, I couldn’t fathom leaving the ship.
The sea is an enchanteress.
It tosses you along with its songs to sirens and rocks you to the lullaby of its stories as it’s hues shift from blue to green reflected in the sky’s eyes.
I slept to dream the rest of the moments back into existence.
Like the most beautiful sunset I have every seen in a valley that had rarely been traversed by humans where the sun glistened like diamonds…
Or when we hiked a few hours along the Arctic tundra and ate lichen while the sun played the landscape like a harp.
My lips were cold, kissed by the tiny shards of snow that fell and my eyes were watery but all I can see is the silence that enveloped me; a silence so loud that my thoughts were drowned out.
In Greenland I told myself in this moment that I would never take anything for granted, that I would hug each moment and memory as deep as the ocean before me.
—
It’s 2 in the morning and I am in the Arctic.
I can feel the best parts of me being scattered along the landscapes like ice shards calving off of glaciers.
It’s 2 in the morning.
….and I am still floating in the Arctic.
—-
(part 1 of a series of posts about this trip)
(a huge thanks to the Hadfields especially for being the person responsible for getting us all together for this)
(and a huge thanks to Quark for literally the whole expedition and the ship and the crew and, and, and…everything :) )
—-
(My book releases in all stores worldwide on September 5th)
It’s been a year since I went on a trip that changed my life.
I boarded an ice-breaker on the West coast of Greenland and journeyed for 18 days all the way up to 81 latitude near the North Pole in the Canadian High Arctic with and a group of 10 incredible people.
There is a pre-Arctic me.
There is a post-Arctic me.
And in-between those two versions of myself is the me that I am convinced is still there, in the Arctic, floating on a ghost-ship, wandering the decks at night.
It took me this long to be able to actually really go through the photos and videos I filmed while there because the last year has been one of the hardest, loneliest, scariest, and strangest in terms of my career and my personal life.
And while I have published a handful of my Arctic photos already and even had a brief gallery showing with Commander Hadfield (my goodness what a bizarre sentence to write), I hadn’t yet digested the full meaning of what everything meant on many levels: on a personal level, on an Earth level, on a profound, philosophical level.
The Arctic was one of the best experiences of my life and I knew it while I was there. That was the surreal aspect of it.
I even talked about it in the moment at 81 degrees latitude (which somehow over 33,000 people have watched, how? why? !…):
When you know that what you are experiencing is a peak and is something so incredibly profound and that it is creating a seismic shift in your soul, it’s one of the heaviest and bittersweet feelings.
The truth is that I am still trying to put this trip into words.
And I feel like just now, a year later, I am ready to go through the photos. There are hundreds I haven’t even touched in terms of editing and writing about.
It’s as if a whole chapter of my life is sitting unread in a book that has been weighed down with an anchor of circumstance.
I would be lying if I said that I didn’t think of this trip often especially as of late.
There is a truth I keep coming back to over and over again.
I was the happiest I have ever been in my life on that trip.
This was while standing on the deck of the Kapitan Khlebnikov as the first snow of the trip started to fall as we waited to board zodiacs (small rafts) to go on an adventure.
That look? That’s not one I see on my face often.
That’s pure joy.
I may never, ever be in a position where I am with (who is one of the most exceptional humans I have ever spent time with) and a truly phenomenal group of people as the ones I was with and with a ship crew that made me come full circle with my family history (more about that in a later post) and an expedition crew that sincerely helped me get through some of my deepest fears (via ).
But I have these photos and videos and memories forever.
And while I know that part of me is still there in the Arctic, the part of me that is here that is struggling to know what’s next can’t stop thinking about the impact that the Arctic had on me as I wonder how to turn that impact into another chapter of my life and career.
I don’t have those answers to what my next chapter is yet but I can share the story of this particular chapter finally starting with some of the self-portraits I took over the course of the trip.
I take photos of myself to mark time.
I am fascinated, appalled, and tantalized by the ebb and flow of mortality.
Like this moment in the morning when the sun touched the Greenlandic waters and a heavy wind rushed through the fjord.
Time disappeared completely on this trip.
Temporal matters mattered less and less by the day as the midnight sun lingered on the horizon for hours bathing us in a near permanent twilight.
If anything, I took these just to remember how I felt in these moments: alive, having contemplated the deep losses of my life every night on the fly-bridge: lost loves, lost beginnings, lost ends that I relinquished to the cold night winds that caressed my face.
And here I was - a creature on this planet wind-burnt, hair full of snow and icy-whispers, freckles like pepper sunlight.
In a cold dream of an Earth star, the sun skips along an infinite horizon.
I would ponder the significance of life, grasping towards the wind that whipped through my hair, feeling small tossed about on an ocean of ice before going back to my cabin.
By the end of the trip, I couldn’t fathom leaving the ship.
The sea is an enchanteress.
It tosses you along with its songs to sirens and rocks you to the lullaby of its stories as it’s hues shift from blue to green reflected in the sky’s eyes.
I slept to dream the rest of the moments back into existence.
Like the most beautiful sunset I have every seen in a valley that had rarely been traversed by humans where the sun glistened like diamonds…
Or when we hiked a few hours along the Arctic tundra and ate lichen while the sun played the landscape like a harp.
My lips were cold, kissed by the tiny shards of snow that fell and my eyes were watery but all I can see is the silence that enveloped me; a silence so loud that my thoughts were drowned out.
In Greenland I told myself in this moment that I would never take anything for granted, that I would hug each moment and memory as deep as the ocean before me.
—
It’s 2 in the morning and I am in the Arctic.
I can feel the best parts of me being scattered along the landscapes like ice shards calving off of glaciers.
It’s 2 in the morning.
….and I am still floating in the Arctic.
—-
(part 1 of a series of posts about this trip)
(a huge thanks to the Hadfields especially for being the person responsible for getting us all together for this)
(and a huge thanks to Quark for literally the whole expedition and the ship and the crew and, and, and…everything :) )
—-
(My book releases in all stores worldwide on September 5th)
It’s been a year since I went on a trip that changed my life. I boarded an ice-breaker on the coast of Greenland and journeyed for 18 days all the way up to 81 latitude near the North Pole in the Canadian High Arctic with Astronaut Commander Hadfield and his hand-picked group of 10 incredible people.
There is a pre-Arctic me.
There is a post-Arctic me.
And in-between those two versions of myself is the me that I am convinced is still there, in the Arctic, floating on a ghost-ship, wandering the decks at night.
It took me this long to be able to actually really go through the photos and videos I filmed while there because the last year has been one of the hardest, loneliest, scariest, and strangest in terms of my career and my personal life.
And while I have published a handful of my Arctic photos already and even had a brief gallery showing with Commander Hadfield (my goodness what a bizarre sentence to write), I hadn’t yet digested the full meaning of what everything meant on many levels: on a personal level, on an Earth level, on a profound, philosophical level.
The Arctic was one of the best experiences of my life and I knew it while I was there. That was the surreal aspect of it.
I even talked about it in the moment at 81 degrees latitude (which somehow over 33,000 people have watched, how? why? !…):
When you know that what you are experiencing is a peak and is something so incredibly profound and that it is creating a seismic shift in your soul, it’s one of the heaviest and bittersweet feelings.
The truth is that I am still trying to put this trip into words. And I feel like just now, a year later, I am ready to go through the photos. There are hundreds I haven’t even touched in terms of editing and writing about. It’s as if a whole chapter of my life is sitting unread in a book that has been weighed down with an anchor of circumstance.
I would be lying if I said that I didn’t think of this trip often especially as of late.
There is a truth I keep coming back to over and over again.
I was the happiest I have ever been in my life on that trip.
This was while standing on the deck of the Kapitan Khlebnikov as the first snow of the trip started to fall as we waited to board zodiacs (small rafts) to go on an adventure. That look? That’s not one I see on my face often.
That’s pure joy.
I may never, ever be in a position where I am with an Astronaut (who is one of the most exceptional humans I have ever spent time with) and a truly phenomenal group of people as the ones I was with and with a ship crew that made me come full circle with my family history (more about that in a later post) and an expedition crew that sincerely helped me get through some of my deepest fears (via Quark Expeditions).
But I have these photos and videos and memories forever.
And while I know that part of me is still there in the Arctic, the part of me that is here that is struggling to know where to go with my career can’t stop thinking about the impact that the Arctic had on me as I wonder how to turn that impact into another chapter of my life and career. My future is currently an entirely open book which is scary and also somehow exciting.
I don’t have those answers to what my next chapter is yet but I can share the story of this one finally piece by piece starting with some of the self-portraits I took over the course of the trip.
I take photos of myself to mark time. Like this moment in the morning when the sun touched the Greenlandic waters and a heavy wind rushed through the fjord.
And time disappeared completely on this trip.
Temporal matters mattered less and less by the day as the midnight sun lingered on the horizon for hours bathing us in a near permanent twilight.
If anything, I took these just to remember how I felt in these moments: alive, having contemplated the deep losses of my life every night on the fly-bridge: lost loves, lost beginnings, lost ends that I relinquished to the cold night winds that caressed my face.
And here I was - a creature on this planet wind-burnt, hair full of snow and icy-whispers, freckles like pepper sunlight.
I felt haunted by the Earth during every sunset.
I would go back to the bare but perfect cabin I shared with my roommate and ponder significance and feeling small tossed about on an ocean of ice.
In these moments I couldn’t fathom leaving the ship.
The sea is an enchanteress.
It tosses you along with its songs to sirens and rocks you to the lullaby of its stories as it’s hues shift from blue to green reflected in the sky’s eyes.
Sleep was just a vehicle to dream of the moments that imprinted themselves on my heart.
Like the most beautiful sunset I have every seen in a valley that had rarely been traversed by humans where the sun glistened like diamonds…
Or when we hiked a few hours along the Arctic tundra and ate lichen while the sun played the landscape like a harp.
My lips were cold, kissed by the tiny shards of snow that fell and my eyes were watery but all I can see is the silence that enveloped me; a silence so loud that my thoughts were drowned out.
In Greenland I told myself in this moment that I would never take anything for granted, that I would hug each moment and memory as deep as the ocean before me.
—
It’s 2 in the morning and I am in the Arctic.
I can feel the best parts of me being scattered along the landscapes like ice shards calving off of glaciers.
It’s 2 in the morning.
….and I am still floating in the Arctic.
—-
(part 1 of a series of posts about this trip)
(a huge thanks to the Hadfields especially Evan for being the person responsible for getting us all together for this)
(and a huge thanks to Quark for literally the whole expedition and the ship and the crew and, and, and…everything :) )
—-
(My book releases in all stores worldwide on September 5th)
()
First part of a series about my trip to the Arctic one year ago.
NY in the Snow - A Magical Vision of New York City
The book!
Huge news!
My 2nd book of New York City photography in the snow is currently available for pre-order worldwide!
Here are some Questions and Answers about the book:
I live in the United States or Canada. What is the link to use to order the book online?
United States Amazon:
United States Barnes and Noble:
Canada Amazon:
Canada Chapters Bookstore:
I like to shop at non-mainstream bookstores. Any love?
Yup! :)
Kinokuniya:
IndieBound:
Powell’s:
Books-A-Million:
Hudson Booksellers:
Drama Bookshop NYC:
I live in the U.K. or other parts of Europe. What are the links to where I can purchase your book in my part of the world?
U.K. Amazon:
Waterstones:
The Guardian Bookshop:
Blackwell’s :
WHSmith: link coming soon
I live in Australia/New Zealand. How can I order the book?
Booktopia:
What are the release dates for the book?
United States and Canada: September 5, 2017
United Kingdom, Europe, Australia: August 3, 2017
Is the book hardcover?
Yes, I am excited to announce that it is available as a hardcover book worldwide!
Front Cover:
Back cover:
I am proud to say that the printing is impeccable. I have not only included my writing but also the camera settings, cameras used, and locations for each photo…
The book is published by Ilex Press, an imprint of Octopus which is under Hachette.
Official book blurb:
The iconic city of New York is a bustling, heady metropolis that, thanks to the power of media, everyone in the world knows intimately, even if they’ve never been. But every once in a while it changes completely. At first a few flakes will fall, then more, and more. Hardened New Yorkers rush for warmth and, while they’re absent, an amazing, glistening almost deserted winter wonderland momentarily appears.
It is these moments that phenomenally popular photo-blogger Vivienne Gucwa lives for. She has been documenting them for more than a decade, rushing out to capture the city in snow. Of all the photos that have made her the celebrated, award-winning success that she is, it is these that are most loved, both online and in print, so we offer them here in a sumptous volume to be enjoyed by anyone who loves New York, whether from afar, as an occasional visitor, or if you’ve never left the Big Apple.
Any book events or signings coming up?
Of course!
The official one will be a book launch by Sony here in NYC. Stay tuned for info on the date.
There will be other book signings and events around Manhattan and Brooklyn as well.
What’s the story behind this book?
I have been photographing every snowstorm in NYC for the last 6 years. I walk up to 8 miles at a time through blizzards, nor'easters, and all sorts of snowstorms. I am forever trying to capture the feelings of loneliness, isolation, anxiety, longing, and nostalgia that are felt as a New Yorker and snowstorms are the best time to attempt such a sort of ephemeral pursuit,
Snow photography is how I express the raw, emotional feeling of nostalgia tinged with loneliness and longing. In a city of millions, feeling lonely and feeling isolation is an unspoken visceral state of being. The nostalgic aspect of NYC in the snow at night brings all of these feelings to the surface.
I paraphrased and read the intro to this book in a spoken word video set to imagery found in the book. It explains what snow in New York City means to me (plus there are snow sounds and nothing is better than the sound of snow crunching underfoot)…
What’s your story? Where are you from?
I grew up here in New York City in Queens. My family was quite poor and my parents both moved to America to pursue better lives when they were younger.
In 2008, I was still extremely broke and had very little money. I was also stressed out as I had quit my job to go back to school to finally finish the degree which I had abandoned nearly a decade earlier because I needed to work many jobs to support myself.
Living on my own since the age of 17 years old with no family support or safety net put me in the precarious position of working many jobs to keep myself afloat while living in New York City. I worked 7 days a week for quite a while and decided I needed to make a change in my life before my life passed me by and I barely explored my passions.
It took a huge leap of faith to put myself back in school. But I did. I decided to go back to school pursuing a pre-med path.
Without much in the way of material things or financial prosperity, walking became my number one way to deal with stress. It also became a way for me to experience the city like I hadn’t before. I would choose a direction and walk as far as my feet would take me.
My walks opened my eyes to a New York City that I hadn’t experienced before. I knew that I wanted to capture the moments and experiences on my walks that made my heart swell. However, I was so broke that I couldn’t even afford a smartphone or a smartphone plan. I went on Amazon and purchased the cheapest point and shoot I could find. At $79, it was a huge investment at the time. That humble little camera had one button and a few settings (one of which was broken!). I didn’t care though. I finally had a tool to explore my view and vision of New York City.
In 2009, I decided to finally post the photos I had accumulated along the way online. I knew nothing about posting photography online and had heard that blogs were a great place to post photography. I literally googled the word “blog” one evening and Tumblr came up as the first search result. I decided to create my blog, NY Through The Lens on Tumblr purely for myself as a way to view my collected images in a beautiful way online.
Since I had no formal training in photography or in-depth knowledge of the rules and concepts defining the field, it didn’t occur to me that I’d have an audience for my work. I honestly didn’t think that anyone would be interested in what I was posting online to my Tumblr blog. However, within a few months of posting my photos to Tumblr, I amassed close to 70,000 followers and I was both humbled and touched by the messages I would receive on a weekly basis.
Most of my photography is heavily influenced by cinema, music, and other art forms as I have a background in fine art (painting and art history).
I am also endlessly haunted by a sense of saudade and sehnsucht: a deep longing for a place that is unidentifiable but somehow familiar and indicative of what could be identified as home. I am on a never-ending quest to attempt to imbue my photography of cities and landscapes with this complex notion of nostalgic longing.
I am fascinated and interested in exploring how certain tones can produce feelings of different forms of nostalgia and how color or lack of color influences memory and desire.
I am currently a full-time photographer who is sponsored by Sony and my first book was a best-seller. It released in 2014. You can read about it .
I do commissioned work for Hollywood, television, ad agencies, interior designers and also sell my work as prints (and tapestries and much more) here:
Where else can I find you online?
If you are still reading, I officially love you. Thank you for reading this far into this post :).
No, seriously. Attention spans are a thing of rarity these days. That you, dear reader, have read or skimmed to here restores some of my faith in humanity. For that, I thank you!
I also recorded a little teaser of me flipping through my book today in case you are into that kind of thing (I am!)…
I truly hope you enjoy the book. It’s my most vulnerable photography because it’s my life’s passion. It feels a bit like sharing a deep secret with the world.
Dreams are always fun to share.
Hope you enjoy these dreams.
My book is now available for pre-order!!! So excited!!!!!!! Such huge news.
