When Jeron Joseph evacuated from his home community of Kwigillingok after ex-typhoon Halong, he sheltered in Anchorage’s Egan Center. He showed his photographs of home to some of the volunteers there: summer cotton in the tundra twilight; figures, bundled in fur parkas, gathered at a cemetery. They were pieces of what made up a place that now faces an uncertain future.
“We got to exchanging some emails, and eventually they landed, you know, within the sight of the chief curator of the Anchorage Museum,” Joseph said.
Now his photographs are getting a bigger stage — an Anchorage Museum exhibit that features Joseph’s work in a display called "Sacred Ground." He said that the exhibit’s images evoke the senses of home and of being out on the open tundra.
Joseph said that he sees the exhibit in part as “a way for me and my fellow Natives to be able to experience that beauty and that feeling of home that I'm sure a lot of us are missing, because I am certainly missing it.”
Joseph’s work is rooted in the Yup’ik and Cup’ik concept of ellarpak, which frames the human experience within the vastness of the world. It’s a way that Joseph said he’s framed his displacement since the typhoon.
“Going through that process of grief, it was certainly not a denial of happiness or any future happiness,” Joseph said. “That grief was a way of accepting that concept.”
Joseph said that in his understanding of ellarpak, humans are inhabitants in the world and not beings in control of it.
“I do believe it is necessary for both sides of the coin to exist. Not just as a Native, but also just someone who is one person of many, who also exists in the world,” Joseph said.
Joseph said that the photographs were taken over a five-year span and that he didn’t set out to create an exhibition. He’s primarily a composer of music and simply wanted to capture what he found to be striking about his home.
Though life has been filled with new senses in Anchorage, Joseph said his family, friends, and neighbors have been able to hold on to that feeling of their home between them.
“I can honestly say that nothing about the energy or our dynamic changed between any of us,” Joseph said. “It's just that the view outside the window is the only thing that's changed.”
Though much of Kwigillingok remains displaced from their home landscape, Joseph said those undeniable features of the region — the softness of the summer sun, the layered greens of the tundra — might soon come through from inside the gallery.
"Sacred Ground" is on exhibition at the Anchorage Museum through early October. It opens March 6 during the museum’s First Friday event, during which admission is free.
Joseph said that those wishing to support Kwigillingok-specific recovery efforts can still donate to this GoFundMe. You can also donate to the Western Alaska Disaster Relief Fund for support across other impacted communities.
