SF: Alaska wilderness photos too controversial for US govt

September 2003
Controversial Alaska photos now on view in San Francisco museum.

AUTUMN ON TAIGA by Subhankar Banerjee

Museum-goers in San Francisco will get an uncensored look at Alaska wilderness photos that ignited a minor uproar in the nation's capital this spring. ...

To see the photos, go to: http://wwbphoto.com/gallery.html

To read about the photographer, go to: http://wwbphoto.com/banerjee.html

Here is some of the coverage from Washington DC in May 2003:

May 21, 2003
Smithsonian's Arctic
Refuge Exhibit Draws Senate Scrutiny
By Jacqueline Trescott
Washington Post Staff Writer, washingtonpost.com

After grilling Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence M. Small yesterday about the changes to a photography exhibit on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a Senate panel asked the Smithsonian to clarify its policy on exhibition captions.

"Put aside this particular issue; if you are going to get people [to donate to the Smithsonian], you need to be clear what the standards are going to be. You don't want to get involved in this kind of row," warned Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), the ranking minority member of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration.

The controversy Dodd was describing started last month when the National Museum of Natural History acknowledged that it had moved a show of photographs by Subhankar Banerjee and also had changed the captions because they contained language that advocated no oil drilling in the refuge. Banerjee had spent 14 months traveling through the isolated refuge, and photographed the landscape and the animals for a book and traveling show.

When the negotiations began, the museum promised the photographer a gallery in a hallway, which is used for art shows, then switched the location to a part of a larger exhibition hall on the first floor. Before the show opened on May 2, the museum moved it back to the original spot, which is outside the Baird Auditorium on the street level near Constitution Avenue.

As plans for the show developed, the issue of oil drilling was coming to a head on the Senate floor. After Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) displayed the book based on Banerjee's work, officials at the Smithsonian said they thought the text in the book, the basis of the explanatory captions, was too political. "They deemed it as political advocacy and we always avoid that," Small said yesterday. He said the curators decided to use the spare style of captions typical in art exhibitions.

The alterations to "Seasons of Life and Land" prompted some lawmakers to accuse the Smithsonian of caving in to political interests.

That debate continued throughout yesterday's testy hearing. Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) pulled out blowups of photographs and charts to support their opposing views. Durbin displayed a picture of the exhibit area taken Saturday. The hallway was crowded with trunks and cases, making some of the work hard to see. A museum spokesman said the cases held equipment for an event that evening.

Durbin, who has called for an investigation of the changes in the Banerjee exhibition, said political viewpoints were permitted in other shows. He displayed a caption from the current retrospective on Elliot Porter, a pioneer of color photography, that says the hillsides of Appalachia were "rent by strip mines." Dodd read from a caption in a current botanical art show that described a plant as being "on verge of extinction." "That advocates action," said Dodd.

Stevens said the Smithsonian had a right to protect itself from political advocacy. He denied that he had exerted any influence on the Smithsonian on this issue and said he was angry that environmental advocates would use the "Smithsonian as a forum."

Small said "no one brought pressure" on the Smithsonian to change the captions or the location of the exhibit.

After the flap in 1995 over its exhibit of the World War II bomber Enola Gay -- of which Stevens was a vocal critic -- the Smithsonian issued planning guidelines for exhibitions that gave final approval for materials and captions to the museum director and the secretary. Small said yesterday that he is ultimately responsible for the content of exhibits.

The Senate committee also heard a report from Michael Kaiser, president of the Kennedy Center, on its expansion plans. The federal and District governments are working with the center to design a plaza that would extend across adjacent roadways and connect it to the city's monumental core. Stevens said he didn't know of any opposition to the plan. He repeated his dream of moving the Saudi Arabian Embassy, which is northeast of the center, to another location to clear more land for the center. "This change is very sound. I wish we could find some land to trade for the Saudi Embassy," he said.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Unsuspecting photographer's Arctic explorations spark political fire in Washington
By GEORGE BRYSON
Anchorage Daily News
(Published: May 25, 2003)

The whole thing had been pretty disappointing. Seattle scientist Subhankar Banerjee had quit his well-paying job with the Boeing Co. to launch a new life for himself as a nature photographer.

Journeying to northeast Manitoba in the Canadian subarctic, he would photograph polar bears prowling the icy shore of Hudson Bay. But the bears he found near the community of Churchill were thoroughly surrounded by people.

"They were in this defined area with these huge vehicles driving tourists around to see them," Banerjee recalled later. "So I decided what I really wanted to do was go to a wild place and actually live with the polar bears."

In spring 2001, Banerjee found that place on the wild coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska.

After extensive preparations, he immersed himself in photographing polar bears, musk ox, caribou and ptarmigan for 14 months in every season.

Later, he edited his images into a handsome book, "Arctic National Later, he edited his images into a handsome book, "Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land," with nature essays by the likes of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Peter Matthiessen and a high-profile introduction by former President Jimmy Carter.

He also convinced curators of the Smithsonian Institution to display his photographs at the National Museum of Natural History in a May-to-September exhibit celebrating the beauty of ANWR. Not bad for a relative newcomer to wildlife photography.

But then the India-born photographer's Cinderella story began to fall apart.

Two months before his exhibit was scheduled to open, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California happened to brandish a copy of his book on the floor of the U.S. Senate during a fiery debate on whether to open the refuge's 1.5 million-acre coastal plain to oil drilling.

Supporters of ANWR drilling, such as Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and most congressional Republicans, had previously argued that seasonal limitations on drilling would help the industry avoid interference with the millions of migratory birds that nest on the plain each summer or the 120,000-strong Porcupine caribou herd that uses it as a calving ground.

During winter, they said, the coastal plain was virtually barren.

"It's frozen!" Stevens exclaimed at one point in the March debate. "It's frozen tundra!"

But opponents of drilling, including Boxer and most congressional Democrats, argued that haul roads, drilling pads and an oil pipeline would ruin the wild character of ANWR regardless of the season and that the coastal plain remained rich with wildlife all year long. As evidence, Boxer lifted a copy of Banerjee's book.

"Cast your eyes on this," she said. "I wish every member could have a chance to take a look at this beautiful book."

The compliment had several immediate ramifications for Banerjee.

On the positive side, it drew momentary national attention to his photography -- and the publicity probably didn't hurt his book sales. On the minus side, however, it prompted the highest officials at the Smithsonian, perhaps mindful of a possible political backlash on Capitol Hill, which funds the national museum, to conclude that Banerjee's ANWR exhibit had become too politicized.

Instead of appearing as planned under the museum's spacious main-floor rotunda, the photographs were shunted downstairs to a basement hallway venue between a loading dock and a freight elevator. Captions that explained what was so special about the images were drastically abridged.

One that pointed out that the buff-breasted sandpiper migrates all the way from Argentina to Alaska and back again each year was shaved down to "Coastal plain and sandpiper."

In fact, as far as the Smithsonian's official Internet site was concerned, Banerjee's ANWR exhibit no longer existed.

Earlier this week, all the current national museum exhibits for May were listed on the Web site, but not his.

In the finger-pointing that followed, drilling opponents such as Boxer and Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois cried foul, and Washington insiders wondered out loud if Stevens was responsible for the Smithsonian's sudden change of heart.

"Washington did the math," Los Angeles Times columnist Patt Morrison wrote. "Stevens wants drilling. The White House wants drilling. Stevens heads the Appropriations Committee, the Senate's checkbook. Congress gives the Smithsonian 70 percent of its budget. The only question being asked was: Did the Smithsonian jump -- or was it pushed?"

Neither Stevens nor his staff spoke with museum personnel or applied political pressure, the senator told an oversight hearing of the Senate Rules Committee that met Tuesday to discuss Smithsonian operations.

But just the same, he applauded the decision to tone down the exhibit's "ANWR is beautiful" rhetoric. It confuses the public, which might conclude that the most scenic areas in the 19 million-acre refuge are vulnerable to oil development, Stevens said.

Earlier, he had branded Banerjee's book as environmentalist "propaganda." At the hearing, he added that Banerjee was "an agent of The Wilderness Society."

But he isn't, Banerjee said in a telephone interview.

Wilderness Society president William H. Meadows may have written one of the book's six essays, but his organization contributed no money.

The book was published by The Mountaineers Books of Seattle with primary support from The Mountaineers Foundation. And while he personally advocates preserving ANWR, Banerjee said, he specifically tried to avoid making political statements on oil drilling or land use in his museum exhibit.

As for the cost of working as a photographer in Alaska, most of the expenses -- which totaled about $250,000 -- were paid out of his own pocket, Banerjee said. To pay for it, he had to liquidate his 401(k) retirement account, spend all of his life savings and go deeply in debt.

Later, he received about $60,000 in grants from individuals and organizations, including $5,000 from the National Audubon Society and $3,000 from the Natural Resources Defense Council. But still he owes about $100,000.

So if he's not an agent of The Wilderness Society -- or at least not a well-paid one -- who is Banerjee? And why are they saying all those things about his pictures?

Contacted by telephone in the midst of a nationwide book tour last week, the photographer agreed to fill in some of the gaps in his public biography and shed new light on what he saw on the coastal plain.

DECIDING TO EXPLORE

Subhankar (pronounced sha-BONK-er) Banerjee was born to middle-class parents in India in 1967. He grew up in Calcutta and developed an early interest in art. His great-uncle was a well-known painter in India and had a strong influence on him.

"A lot of people revered his work," Banerjee said. "That was my driving force."

In college, however, Banerjee opted for the practicality of studying electrical engineering. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1990, he moved to the United States to attend graduate school at New Mexico State University, where he earned master's degrees in physics and computer science.

After graduation, he began working at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico as a research scientist in computational physics. He also found time to explore the outdoors, joining the local Sierra Club and taking part in weekly outings. The more he got out, he said, the more he wanted to explore America's wilderness. In 1996, he moved to Seattle for just that reason while also landing a job as a research scientist with Boeing.

At the same time, he began to cultivate a newfound interest in photography, which seemed to marry the technical and artistic sides of his background. He joined a photography club in Seattle and sold some pictures to magazines. Then in 2000, he quit his job at Boeing and launched a new career as a free-lance photographer specializing in wildlife, landscape and cultural subjects.

All of which led Banerjee to Alaska. Part of the attraction, he said, were the spectacular wildlife images of the late Japanese-Alaskan photographer Michio Hoshino, who took some of his best pictures in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Banerjee bought all of Hoshino's books.

"Michio's work is something that inspired me the most," he said. "He's one of my idols. ... He truly lived with the wildlife. He lived with the land."

Banerjee wanted to do the same. After his disappointment in viewing polar bears in Canada, he began poring over the reports of biologists who had studied ANWR. He saw where there were gaps in the information, especially in winter. He heard how the changing weather patterns that many scientists attributed to global warming were also changing the character of the coastal plain.

Wildlife populations had shifted there in the past 20 years.

As the dwarf birch habitat of warmer climes began extending farther north, moose from the Brooks Range were venturing out on the coastal plain. As the Arctic ice cap continued to retreat, more polar bears were denning on the mainland.

To add anything of value to the record, he decided, would probably take several years of fieldwork. But he was anxious to get started.

First, however, Banerjee did himself the favor of seeking the advice of a couple of experts. Free-lance photographer Natalie Fobes of Seattle, whose images of Alaska have appeared in National Geographic magazine and several books, gave him valuable tips on how to gear up for a northern photo expedition. And wildlife guide Robert Thompson of Kaktovik agreed to be a field assistant and adviser on all things Inupiat.

"The project would not have survived without Robert's help," Banerjee said.

That became clear on the day he first arrived in the refuge, in March 2001 -- with the temperature hovering at 40 below zero and a fierce northerly driving the wind chill to 90 below. "He assured me, 'Things will get worse -- but you'll get used to it.' "

Those first three months were the hardest, Banerjee said. Still, he saw extraordinary sights, including a musk ox herd trekking south to escape that year's unusually deep snowpack on the coastal plain (another symptom of global warming), then retreating north again to elude a Brooks Range grizzly. As the herd of 14 adults and one calf passed his encampment in late spring, Banerjee captured the image in the peach-colored blur of sun-drenched ice fog.

That summer, he spent five days in Seattle sharing his photos with members of the Blue Earth Alliance, led by Fobes -- and winning the group's moral support -- then returned to ANWR recharged.

In the fall, he photographed moose on the coastal plain as they continued to extend their range north. He found seven species of birds -- among them gyrfalcons, redpolls, American dippers, snowy owls and ptarmigan -- that overwinter on the plain.

He watched the ptarmigan explode out of the snow like little hidden atomic missiles. He saw a huge expanse of them spread across the frozen Sadlerochit River in a congregation about a mile wide. But just as remarkable, Banerjee said, was the sight of a single American dipper that had managed to find open water in which to feed, just above a warm spring, in the middle of an ANWR winter.

Or that day on the Canning River delta in spring 2002 when he watched a polar bear sow and her two cubs frolic in the snow -- "running and nuzzling" -- before returning to their den.

That night, a blizzard kicked up and Banerjee and Thompson had to hunker down in their tent. The next day, they returned to the den and found it had drifted over with fresh snow, with no tracks to indicate whether the bears had abandoned it for the sea ice.

Banerjee bet they hadn't.

So for the next 29 days, with only one break to resupply their food and fuel, the two men maintained a vigil over the den through nearly constant windstorms, waiting for the bears to reappear. But they never did, Banerjee said. He never saw them again.

"But that one day of seeing the bear and her cubs play on the snowbank of the Canning River delta made all the blizzardy days seem worthwhile," Banerjee wrote in "Seasons of Life and Land."

"It was truly the wildest scene I witnessed during my stay at the refuge."

And there wasn't another tourist in sight.

Reporter George Bryson can be reached at gbryson@adn.com.