You know, it's sort of this idea that if you love, you set a free, right, that this idea

that, you know, to really love a place, the answer may be to walk away from it, right?

That if, you know, that if that place is really worth protecting, protecting means that, that, you know,

that you've let it, that you let it be. And there aren't a lot of places in this world these days

that you can go and really, you know, really be away from it all, right? Like, I mean, really, you know,

days in any direction, uh, not have the built environment, not have machinery, not have other people

that you can really go and, and there be silence. That was photographer Ben Huff. And for him,

photography is gloriously incomplete. It has the potential to start a conversation, but it takes

the viewer to finish it, to bring their own history and their own knowledge to the table and fill

in the blanks. That's one of the things that's wonderful about photography, he says, it prompts a

narrative, it introduces a concept or an idea for further examination. Much of his work is

interested in exploited landscapes in the things that we've brought to places. His recent book,

Atomic Island, details the US military occupation of Adak Island during World War II, and the

aftermath of their departure that left so much of Ben in infrastructure and debris. So here he is, Ben Huff.

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.

Do you consider yourself a photographer or a storyteller?

That's a really great question. You know, I think I would, I think I would hedge it a touch,

and I think myself, I think of myself as an artist, and I say that sort of in a way of hedging

in that I feel like it's sort of a catch-all for a lot of different things, right? Whether it's

photography, whether it's bookmaking, whether it's writing, there's a lot that I can

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