But I was like a college student and had no money and this was my one chance to do this thing.

So I was like, well, I'm tough, I'm from Alaska.

I can do this.

Again, bad idea.

It was like G Force Wins blasting volcanic ash and so it's just like

grit in your skin. Sometimes it was so windy I literally just had to lay down on the

ground. I almost went on like for days.

That was photographer Acacia Johnson. And this is part two of my conversation with her. In part one, she talked about subverting the stereotypes of what it means to be an explorer,

and also what it means to represent landscapes through photography.

In this next part, Acacia talks about creating a record of stories,

of people and of place,

and how, through photography, she has the opportunity

to start important conversations about polar regions, about the people who live there, climate change, and ultimately the lessons we can learn from it.

So here's the second part of my conversation with Acacia Johnson.

Welcome to Chattermarks, a podcast of the Anchorage Museum dedicated to exploring Alaska's identity

through the creative and critical thinking of ideas, past, present, and future.

My name is Cody Liska and I'll be your host.

So in a lot of ways, the type of photography that you do I think can be described as

having or starting a conversation was there a time when you realized that the photos you're taking are starting important conversations?

I think it was after I came back from that winter in the Canadian Arctic when I realized like I have

photographed things that I think not a lot of other people have seen and I think that telling the stories about what life is really like in the Arctic is really

important. I mean if we don't understand what places are very far away and different from us are like, then how are we going to care

...