Subhankar Banerjee awarded 2003 Cultural Freedom Fellowship
Slide show and phone interview audio.
Santa Fe, NM—Lannan Foundation announced that it has awarded its first Cultural Freedom Fellowship to Subhankar Banerjee, a wilderness photographer based in Bellevue, Washington, who is working to increase public awareness about issues that threaten the health and well-being of the planet.
Mr. Banerjee’s current work involves advocating for permanent protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, located in the remote northeast corner of Alaska. Over a period of two years he traveled approximately 4,000 miles photographing the vast wilderness of the refuge, one of the most breathtaking, pristine and culturally significant ecosystems in the world. This land is considered sacred by the Gwich’in people who reside in Alaska and Canada, but industry lobbyists have long attempted to persuade the United States government to open up the refuge to drilling for oil and gas.
Mr. Banerjee, who is from Kolkata (Calcutta) India, received $100,000 to continue his work to protect the Arctic and to study other topics related to the environmental and social effects of globalization. In addition to the fellowship, Lannan is also providing financial and technical support to promote the story of his Arctic journey by funding a lecture tour and a series of exhibitions of his photographs. Mr. Banerjee’s lecture tour is based on the book Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land (The Mountaineers Books, 2003), which features his photographs and essays by prominent conservationists advocating for permanent protection of the refuge.
“We are extremely pleased to award the first Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship to Subhankar Banerjee,” said foundation president J. Patrick Lannan, Jr. “Subhankar is more than a conservationist - he is a cultural freedom fighter who points out the importance of interdependent relationships between land, water, wildlife, and the various human cultures that make up the world. At his own personal expense, he gave up a lucrative career in the field of computer science and went into debt to finance his visit to the refuge. His spectacular photographs achieved what others could not - exposing the lie that the Arctic Refuge is a frozen wasteland - put forth by those who place short-term profit above cultural diversity and the health of the planet.”
“The phrase ‘Cultural Freedom’ is a wonderful one—I take it to mean freedom to continue one’s way of life,” says Banerjee. “The word ‘culture’ to me signifies both cultures of our own species as well as various cultures of all other living beings with whom we share this planet, and their freedom to continue their ways of lives. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a wonderful place to experience such a freedom—a pacific loon that I saw nesting up there on the bank of a lake on the coastal tundra is a species that is 20 million years old. It is the same place where the Inupiats and Gwich’in have subsisted for over 10,000 years—nature and culture living in harmony for all these years that we may disrupt and ruin because of the profit and greed of a few.”
