1000 Words For Snow explores ski cultures around the world: the plurality of people and places connected by the simple act of gliding on snow. The resulting images offer a visual narrative about our varied relationships to skiing, from joy to romanticism to survival.
I started documenting diverse ski communities 14 years ago, primarily with my medium format camera, making hundreds of images from all seven continents. These photos present absurdities, distinctions and commonalities in the world’s ski cultures, and as a collection, attempt to show the interconnection of our shared human condition.
Locations include: the Israeli Defence Force’s Alpine Unit in the Golan Heights, Berber skiers in Morocco’s High Atlas mountains, Indigenous skiers in Russia’s Altai Mountains where skiing is said to have originated, and Hutterite skiers in the Canadian Prairies who brave frigid temperatures to ski river valleys beside their wheat fields.