In the Arctic with Malaurie

In 1997, legendary Arctic explorer Jean Malaurie, author of The Last Kings of Thule and founder of the influential Terre Humaine series, invited Bruce Jackson to meet him in Nome, Alaska. “Bring gloves,” he said. What followed was a journey into the physical, political, and spiritual landscapes of the Far North. Traveling through Nome and the surrounding villages of the Seward Peninsula, Jackson and Malaurie visit Native corporations, churches, shelters, courtrooms, and correctional centers. They cross tundra shaped by permafrost, trace the histories of polar explorers, and encounter hunters, elders, drunks, missionaries, bureaucrats, and the homeless who survive along the Bering Sea. In spare, observant prose, Jackson documents a community where alcohol and faith, poverty and endurance, colonial history and Indigenous resilience converge beneath a sky of relentless Arctic light. This BlazeVOX edition presents Jackson’s text alongside a full suite of his photographs, finally realizing his vision of words and images as equal partners. The writing records what happened and what was remembered; the photographs capture the long shadows, low sun, and stark brilliance of the North. Part travel narrative, part ethnography, part elegy, In the Arctic with Malaurie is both an intimate portrait of a singular explorer and a searching meditation on borders, between nations, cultures, memory, and myth. Bruce Jackson Bruce Jackson is SUNY Distinguished Professor and James Agee Professor of American Culture at University at Buffalo. He is a documentary photographer and filmmaker, author of hundreds of journal and newspaper articles, and the author or editor of nearly fifty books, six of them with BlazeVOX: Flowering: Images and Ideas (with Diane Christian, 2025), The Programmer (Corrected Edition) (2025), Ephemera: 1995-2022: On politics, art, justice, torture and war (2023), Changing Tense: 30 memento mori (2021), Places: Things Heard, Things Seen (2019), and Robert Creeley on the Poet’s Work (2020). He is an associate member of New York’s Wooster Group, which has produced two plays based on his recordings and books. His documentary photographs have been widely published and exhibited. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, was nominated for a Grammy, and was named an Associater Member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters. The French government honored him for his documentary, ethnographic and criminal justice work by naming him Chevalier in L’ordre national des Arts et des Lettres (2002) and L’ordre national du Mérite (2012). Jan Borm: “Jean Malaurie 1922-2024” Jean Malaurie passed away at the age of 101 years, on February 5, 2024, at his home in Dieppe, France. Professor Malaurie was Emeritus Director of Research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études (EHESS) in Paris. He found fame as the author of The Last Kings of Thule and the founder of the prestigious “Terre Humaine” book series. Read more