For more than 30 years, photographer James Balog (“BAY-log”) has broken new conceptual and artistic ground on one of the most important issues of our era: human modification of our planet’s natural systems. An avid mountaineer with a graduate degree in geography and geomorphology, James is equally at home on a Himalayan peak or a whitewater river, the African savannah or polar icecaps.
To reveal the impact of climate change, James founded the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), the most wide-ranging, ground-based, photographic study of glaci
ers ever conducted. The project is featured in the Emmy® award-winning documentary, Chasing Ice, which also won the award for Excellence in Cinematography at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, as well as dozens of awards at film festivals worldwide. Chasing Ice was shortlisted for the 2013 Academy Awards. It has been screened at The White House, the U.S. Congress, the U.K. House of Commons and the United Nations. It has been the subject of features on the NBC Evening News, ABC Nightline, The Late Show with David Letterman, PBS’s Moyers & Company, and Real Time with Bill Maher.
James has been honored with many awards, including, in recent years, an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree from the University of Alberta, the American Geophysical Union Presidential Citation for Science and Society, the Duke University LEAF Award, the Sam & Julie Walters Prize for Environmental Activism, the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP) League Award, the Royal Photographic Society’s Hood Medal, and the Heinz Award.
Mr. Balog is the author of eight books. ICE: Portraits of Vanishing Glaciers was published by Rizzoli in 2012. Among his other titles are Tree: A New Vision of the American Forest (2004) and Survivors: A New Vision of Endangered Wildlife (1990), hailed as a major conceptual breakthrough in environmental photography.
James’ work is in dozens of public and private art collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Corcoran Gallery, the Denver Art Museum and the Gilman Paper Company. It has been extensively published in most of the world’s major pictorial magazines including The New Yorker, National Geographic, Life, and Vanity Fair. National Geographic showcased EIS in major features in 2007, 2010 and 2013. EIS is the subject of a 2009 NOVA/PBS documentary, Extreme Ice.
James lives in the Rocky Mountains, near Boulder, Colorado, with his wife and two daughters.
