Subhankar Banerjee is an Indian born American photographer, writer, educator and activist. Over the past decade he has been a leading international voice on issues of arctic conservation, indigenous human rights, resource development and climate change. More recently he has also been focusing on global forest deaths from climate change. His photographs, writing and lectures have reached millions of people around the world.

Subhankar was born in 1967 in Berhampore, a small town near Kolkata, India. His early experiences in his parents’ tropical home in rural Bengal fostered his life long interest in the value of land and it’s resources. Early in his childhood his parents introduced him to the work of their friend—renowned writer and activist MAHASWETA DEVI, whose work and life continues to inspire him immensely. During his childhood, in the cinemas of the small towns where he grew up, he also came to know the work of brilliant Bengali filmmakers including, SATYAJIT RAY, MRINAL SEN, and RITWIK GHATAK. He loved cinema and found their visual explorations of everyday life and larger social issues immensely inspiring. His great uncle Bimal Mookerjee, a painter, taught him how to paint. He created portraits and detailed rural scenes, but knew from growing up in a middle–income family that it would be nearly impossible for him to pursue a career in the arts. He chose instead the practical path of studying engineering in India and later earned two masters degrees in physics and computer science at New Mexico State University in the US.

In the New Mexican Desert, he fell in love with the open spaces of the American West. He hiked and backpacked frequently in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah, and bought a 35mm camera with which he began taking photographs. After finishing his graduate study, he moved to Seattle, Washington to take up a research job in the sciences. In the Pacific Northwest, his commitment to photography grew, and he photographed extensively during many outdoor trips in Washington, Oregon, Montana, Wyoming, California, New Hampshire, Vermont, Florida, British Columbia, Alberta, and Manitoba. In 2000, he left his scientific career behind and began a long–term photography project in the American Arctic.

After a fourteen–month long journey in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Subhankar published his first book in 2003, ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE: SEASONS OF LIFE AND LAND (Seattle: The Mountaineers Books, 2003). Through a generous grant from Lannan Foundation, 10,000 copies of the book were donated to indigenous communities, activists, students, libraries and policy makers in the United States and other Arctic countries. The accompanying exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History was censored during the George W. Bush administration, that resulted in major international press and media coverage of his work. Subsequently the California Academy of Sciences revived the exhibition and traveled it around the US. A detailed account of that history can be found in historian Finis Dunaway’s essay Reframing the Last Frontier: Subhankar Banerjee and the Visual Politics of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the anthology A KEENER PERCEPTION: ECOCRITICAL STUDIES IN AMERICAN ART HISTORY (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009).

Subhankar’s work has been instrumental in the conservation efforts of the ecologically and culturally significant areas of the American Arctic, including, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Teshekpuk Lake wetlands, Utukok River uplands, Beaufort and Chukchi seas. He works closely with the Gwich’in and Inupiat indigenous communities of the North American Arctic and with environmental organizations Alaska Wilderness League, Northern Alaska Environmental Center and others. He also spent time with the Eveny and the Yukaghir indigenous communities in Siberia. Most recently Subhankar edited an anthology titled ARCTIC VOICES: RESISTANCE AT THE TIPPING POINT (New York: Seven Stories Press, June 19, 2012).

His photographs have been exhibited in more than fifty museums and galleries in the US, Europe and Mexico. During 2012 his photographs will be shown in a solo exhibition ARCTIC SUBTEXT at the Fordham University Center Gallery in New York (February 17 – March 23), and in several group exhibitions, including 18TH BIENNALE OF SYDNEY: all our relations in Sydney, Australia (June 27 – September 16), and at the HOOD MUSEUM OF ART at Dartmouth College, the LANNAN FOUNDATION GALLERY in Santa Fe, and the ANCHORAGE MUSEUM. On August 26, 2010 Subhankar founded CLIMATESTORYTELLERS.ORG where he publishes his own blog writing as well as by other writers, scientists and activists from around the world.


His stories have been featured in multiple television productions including, Sundance Channel’s series BIG IDEAS FOR A SMALL PLANET: SEASON 1, EPISODE CREATE (2007). Profile stories about his work have appeared in many publications, including VANITY FAIR BY INGRID SISCHY (December 2003), THE SEATTLE TIMES SUNDAY MAGAZINE BY LYNDA V. MAPES (March 21, 2004), and SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER BY REGINA HACKETT (June 25, 2005). He has given many interviews including, THINK RADIO WITH KRYS BOYD (KERA—NPR DALLAS/FORT WORTH) (2011), IF YOU LOVE THIS PLANET WITH DR. HELEN CALDICOTT (2011), IDENTITYTHEORY.COM WITH ALEXANDRA TURSI (2010), DEMOCRACY NOW WITH AMY GOODMAN (2009), INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS: ONCE A PHYSICIST (2008), and WBUR–NPR ON–POINT WITH TOM ASHBROOK (2003).

His many lectures and panels include, Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe—Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Event with Subhankar and Peter Matthiessen(2004); Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (2004); Harvard University Museum of Natural History—Subhankar with Sarah James (2004); Seattle Arts and Lectures—Subhankar with Terry Tempest Williams and David Allen Sibley (attended by 2500 people in 2005); UNEP Climate Change Symposium at the Palais des Beaux–Arts in Brussels (2007); United Nations Headquarters in New York—Unlearning Intolerance: Art Changing Attitudes Toward the Environment (2008); Barnard College at Columbia University—Gender on Ice Conference (2008); Dartmouth College Hood Museum of Art—Photography and Activism (2009); University of Utah College of Humanities—Annual Lyceum II Lecture Subhankar and Peter Matthiessen (2009); Columbia College in Chicago—Annual Critical Encounters Series Human|Nature (2009); Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia (2010); and Indiana University in Bloomington—Fall 2010 Themester: sustain·ability: Thriving on a Small Planet (2010); annual Rapaport Lecture in Contemporary Art at Amherst College (2011); Amon Carter Museum of American Art (2011); a keynote speech at The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment biennial conference Species, Space and the Imagination of the Global (2011); Art+Environment conference at the Nevada Museum of Art (2011); Friends Forum Lecture at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2011); The Art of Sustainability panel at Princeton University (2011). His 2012 lecture venues include Fordham University, Stanford University, Seattle Arts & Lectures, and Anchorage Museum.

For latest news on books, exhibitions, essays, and lectures please visit the NEWS page on this site.

Subhankar has received many awards, including inaugural Cultural Freedom Fellowship from Lannan Foundation (2003), inaugural Greenleaf Artist Award from United Nations Environment Programme (2005), National Conservation Achievement Award from National Wildlife Federation (2003), Special Achievement Award from Sierra Club (2003), Housberg Award from Alaska Conservation Foundation (2002), and was named an Arctic Hero by Alaska Wilderness League (2010). In 2011 he was named a Distinguished Alumni by New Mexico State University. He has been a visiting scholar at the graduate program in environmental humanities at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City since 2006; was artist–in–residence at Dartmouth College in winter 2009; and Director’s Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and Visiting Fellow at the Forbes College of Princeton University in fall 2011; and Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Art History and Music at Fordham University in New York in spring 2012.