Photographer Paints Portraits Of Inuit People Into Polar Night Landscapes

“Northern Lights” is a new series of photos by French photographer Fabrice Wittner, who used stencils, light painting, and long exposure photography to combine historical portraits of Inuit people into modern-day polar night landscapes.

More: Fabrice Wittner, Facebook h/t: petapixel

“The nocturnal and mystical mood created around an old Inuit imagery is enlightening the polar night to make us think of the fragility of a culture and its environment,” Wittner writes. “A matter we could be dealing with anywhere on Earth, a matter that is resonating with current ecological and climate issues.”

Wittner first found archives of portraits from old expeditions to Greenland and Alaska. He redrew the portraits onto the back of leather tarps before using a precision knife to cut out holes, then finds a location and frames his shot before placing the stencil into the scene (attached to a softbox and remote flash).