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Arctic Directory: Excerpts from ‘Arctic Oil’ Photographs of Alaska’s North Slope by Judy Patrick
When I first started taking photos in Prudhoe Bay in 1989, I was excited to finally see the place everyone called “The Slope.” My husband had worked there ten years earlier during construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline after the giant Prudhoe discovery. I often overheard he and his friends swapping stories like they all belonged to some exclusive club. Their descriptions fascinated me: a remote, frozen landscape, roads made from ice, hotel-sized buildings that arrived on barges, and massive construction equipment.
Over the years I have photographed “The Slope” from every angle imaginable. My clients included oil producers, drilling and pipeline contractors, heavy construction companies, air carriers, and camp caterers. During all of these assignments, my goal was to capture images that would illustrate what working in the Arctic was like, and how operations were conducted in a safe and responsible manner.
One of my favorite examples of environmental protection is the “duck ponds” — bright yellow or orange plastic spill containment that is placed under every single piece of equipment or vehicle, so that any drips or leaks are captured. I joke about how much cleaner the oil fields are than your average grocery store parking lot, but it’s really true.
Over time, I realized that most Alaskans had no idea where their neighbors or family members were heading when they flew north for their work rotation. Workers constantly asked me for photos they could share with friends and family back home, and that’s what led me to publish this book. The Arctic is difficult to describe in words. So, for those who will never get to Deadhorse, I hope these images provide a window to a beautiful and unique place that I have grown to love. What others are saying While the passion of many Alaska photographers is wildlife, unless an animal is walking under an oil pipeline or grazing near a drilling rig, it holds little interest for Judy Patrick: The people and machines of the oil industry are what grab her and that’s evident in her evocative photographs of the Arctic.
If you want to really see what the industry looks like in this little-traveled and forbidding part of North America, “Arctic Oil, photographs of Alaska’s North Slope” by Judy Patrick is the best documentary you will find, partly because of Patrick’s fascination with the industry and her desire to document its footprint on the land — and partly because she will go anywhere, in any weather, to shoot photographs.
She once told me that she’s at her best when she’s in a helicopter with the door wide open snapping pictures.
My favorites in her collection are the building of BP’s Northstar Island in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska’s North Slope. She shot every aspect of the oil field’s development, from placing the gravel for the island to laying the pipeline to take the oil to shore.
Most important, her photos are honest. There’s no photo-shopping in mountains along the flat coastal plain, which at least one anti-development group is guilty of doing.
Rather, in Patrick’s work the vast Arctic and industry’s presence is accurately portrayed.
You will come away with an appreciation for the people and the science that protect an environment both pristine and rich in natural energy resources.
—Kay Cashman, publisher & executive editor of Anchorage-based Petroleum News
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