I wanted to experience nature—be out in the wind and the sun, and not be measuring nature and making calculations about it.
An avid mountaineer with a graduate degree in geography and geomorphology, James Balog initiated the Extreme Ice Survey, the most wide-ranging ground-based photographic glacier study ever conducted.
His photographs are in dozens of public and private art collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Corcoran Gallery, the Denver Art Museum, and the Gilman Paper Company. They have been published in most of the world’s major pictorial magazines including The New Yorker, National Geographic, LIFE, and Vanity Fair. His eight books include Ice: Portraits of Vanishing Glaciers, Tree: A New Vision of the American Forest, and Survivors: A New Vision of Endangered Wildlife.