Entry Title: " People of the Ice"
Name: Luciana Whitaker, Brazil
Category: Professional, Environmental


Entry Description: The Iñupiaq Eskimos have been hunting whales in traditional sealskin paddleboats since time immemorial. A quota limits this subsistence hunt. The Iñupiaq connection to the land, sea and natural resources is essential to the community’s sense of identity. Whaling is the foremost way they express this connection because of the communal nature of the hunt and the sharing of the whale. Hunting is vital to the culture and it’s preservation. Right now, their garden, the sea ice is melting. This traditional hunt is being threatened by climate change. I would like to show it while it is still there.

Luciana Whitaker started her carrier taking pictures for New York Newsday. Upon returning to Brazil, Whitaker worked at Folha de S. Paulo, Brazil's largest newspaper, for 8 years. During much of that time, Whitaker served as photo editor at the paper's Rio de Janeiro bureau, covering assignments ranging from presidential international travels to city violence. From 1996 to 2004, Whitaker lived among Iñupiat Eskimos and raised a family on Alaska's northernmost village, Barrow, where she documented Native culture and the traditional whale hunt. She now lives in Brazil and shoots for newspapers, magazines and news agencies as well as doing corporate work, annual reports, books, posters and calendars for USA, Europe and Brazil. Whitaker received the Millenium Photo Project Judge’s Award Photo in 2000, a honorable mention in Brazil’s most important photo prize, Exxon Award of Photojournalism (Premio Esso) in 1994, Folha de S. Paulo Award of Journalism, best photo of the year 1993, Nikon International Contest honorable mention in 1991/1992, Coca-Cola Award for the best photo on Rock in Rio in 1991. Her pictures have been widely seen in publications such as The Times, Los Angeles Times, Paris Match, Newsweek, Marie Claire (UK), The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Nature Conservancy Magazine and in books, such as “Alaska 24-7” (DK Publishing), “America at Home” (Running Press), “Living our Cultures, Sharing our Heritage: The First Peoples of Alaska (Smithsonian Books). As part of her work on preserving Iñupiat culture, Whitaker collaborated with Iñupiat elders on a book describing ways to make thread out of caribou tendons. In 2008, Whitaker wrote and published "11 anos no Alasca" ("11 Years in Alaska,") an autobiographical journal with over 200 pictures about life among the Iñupiaq. Whitaker has her images in agencies Getty Images, Accent Alaska, Olhar Imagem and Pulsar Imagens. Her work is featured in collections such as Smithsonian, Iñupiat Heritage Museum, Ukpeagvik Iñupiat Corporation and North-Slope Government in Alaska.