White Paradise

Fragile, obdurate, and raw, the North Pole is perhaps the most spectacular -and delicate- geological gem. Since his first expedition in 1995 with the French adventurer Jean-Louis Etienne, Francis Latreille has used his incredible photographic talents to capture the dramatic consequences of global warming on the Far North regions. More than just a tableau of his fascination with this world and its way of life, White Paradise is a tribute to the North Pole, its inhabrtants, and its exceptional beauty and light Every year, the ice field decreases in size, and the glaciers of Greenland retreat farther and farther from the south. During his missions to the North Pole, Latreille has met the inhabitants of these forbidding regions and discovered their environment and lifestyle; he has also witnessed, firsthand, the uncertainty of their future. In 1999, he documented the Mammuthus expedition, which unearthed Jarkov, a threeton mammoth that died more than twenty thousand years ago. Each morning when the sun rises above the blinding-white, crisp horizon, those lucky and rugged enough to have braved the punishing elements and ventured to the North Pole experience a living and breathing wonder. For the rest of us, we need look no further than Francis Latreille's stunningly beautiful White Paradise.