Life in Alaska in the Round-the-Clock Darkness of Polar Night | The New Yorker

Life in Alaska in the Round-the-Clock Darkness of Polar Night

In Mark Mahaney’s photographs, taken in the heart of winter, Utqiagvik, Alaska, the northernmost city in the United States, looks abandoned, though there are hints of humanity.

via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/life-in-alaska-during-the-round-the-clock-darkness-of-polar-night

Utqiagvik, Alaska, is the northernmost city in the United States. Situated more than three hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, with a population between four and five thousand, it sits on a promontory that juts into the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, with no roads or railways connecting it to the rest of the state. With the exception of a seasonal summer barge that carries heavy provisions and equipment, all supplies and visitors must arrive via modified passenger planes, which make stops to pick up new passengers and provisions, not unlike large, airborne buses. As the Northern Hemisphere tilts away from the sun in the winter months, communities close to the North Pole experience a phenomenon known as polar night: a period of uninterrupted darkness. In Utqiagvik, this lasts for approximately two months of the year.