Ordinary Life in an Extraordinary Landscape

Giovanna Arnaud Fleming

Giovanna Arnaud Fleming is an Italian born photographer based in the French Alps. She began photographing landscapes from a desire to immerse herself in beautiful, wild places, and has developed a particular fascination with remote regions, cold environments and solitude. Her work has since expanded into wildlife, especially the Arctic and polar bears. People rarely appear as subjects in isolation; she is more interested in the relationship between human life and the natural world, and in the ways people adapt to, depend upon and coexist with their environment.

www.gioflemingphotography.com

Verklaring

On Greenland’s west coast, the extraordinary is part of everyday life. In Ilulissat, Qeqertarsuaq and Oqaatsut, people live within a landscape of immense beauty, scale and severity, where ice, sea, mountains and changing seasons are never far from daily life.

Photographed in winter and autumn, this series looks at the point where the remarkable becomes familiar. The landscape can be beautiful, restrictive, useful and dangerous at the same time. It shapes movement and work, but it also forms the everyday view from a house, a road, a playground or a harbour.

This series is not about Greenland as spectacle. It is about the lives carried on within it: work, play, transport, family, tradition and death. Again and again, human presence appears small against the scale of the land and ice. Yet that presence persists, adapting to an environment that may look extraordinary to an outsider but is simply home to the people who live there.

Ilulissat Airport

Ilulissat Airport sits alone among snow-covered rock and frozen coastline. In a country with no roads between towns, air travel is part of the basic infrastructure of everyday life.

Ordinary Life in an Extraordinary Landscape

Photobook Prize 2026

Serie-inzending

Ingediend August 08, 2026

Ilulissat Airport

Ilulissat Airport sits alone among snow-covered rock and frozen coastline. In a country with no roads between towns, air travel is part of the basic infrastructure of everyday life.

Ilulissat in Winter

Houses cluster along the coast beneath the snow-covered mountains, bringing intense colour into the winter landscape

Football in Qeqertarsuaq

Children of different ages gather on Qeqertarsuaq’s bright artificial pitch, one of the liveliest spots in the settlement, with icebergs drifting through Disko Bay beyond the goal.

Winter Commute

A cyclist, pedestrian and car share an icy road in Ilulissat during an exceptional cold spell in late February 2017. Temperatures fell below −30°C, with forecast wind chill close to −50°C.

Outside the Day-Care Centre

A woman pushes a pram past the colourful fence of a day-care centre in Ilulissat during an exceptional cold spell in February 2017. Temperatures were around −33°C, with wind chill close to −50°C.

Winter Laundry

Laundry hangs outside between sheds, boats and cars partly buried in snow, an ordinary domestic routine continuing through the Arctic winter.

Laundry Day, Qeqertarsuaq

Laundry dries outside a house in Qeqertarsuaq while an iceberg drifts offshore, an ordinary domestic task carried out against a landscape that would be extraordinary almost anywhere else.

Blue House, Oqaatsut

Daisies grow around a brightly painted house in Oqaatsut, the small settlement formerly known as Rodebay.

Puppies, Qeqertarsuaq

Greenland dog puppies roam freely through Qeqertarsuaq. From around five to six months old, sled dogs are normally chained when not working, although some spend the summer roaming freely on islands.

Working Dogs in Summer

Adult Greenland sled dogs remain chained beside the houses through the snowless season. Their working life resumes when winter returns and the sledges can travel again

Sledge Team, Ilulissat

A team of Greenland dogs pulls a sledge through Ilulissat. Harnessed to the sledge, the working dogs have the opportunity to run rather than remain chained

Waiting for Winter

Snowmobiles and sledges sit beside a house in Qeqertarsuaq, with an iceberg beyond, equipment waiting for the return of winter conditions.

Harbour Break-Up, Ilulissat

After an exceptionally cold February 2017, the sea ice in Ilulissat had only just begun to break up, allowing boats to start going back out to sea.

Across Disko Bay

A small boat passes beneath a vast iceberg, seen from the regular ferry between Qeqertarsuaq and Ilulissat. On a journey that stops at tiny settlements along the coast, extraordinary icebergs are simply part of the everyday view.

Whaling Winch, Oqaatsut

An old winch stands on the rocky shore of Oqaatsut, formerly Rodebay, a remnant of the settlement’s whaling history and once used to haul whales ashore. Oqaatsut developed as a whaling station and the settlement still has strong links with hunting and fishing

Kayaks in Winter, Ilulissat

Kayaks are stored upside down on wooden racks above the shore in Ilulissat, while the sea remains open below despite the surrounding winter snow and ice.

To Oqaatsut by Helicopter

A helicopter lands in blowing snow at Oqaatsut in February 2017. With the sea frozen, the settlement could be reached by air or overland by dog sledge and snowmobile, making winter conditions central to everyday movement.

Oqaatsut from Above

Oqaatsut, 21 kilometres north of Ilulissat, is a small settlement with no road connection to the outside world.

Cemetery, Qeqertarsuaq

Bright artificial flowers mark the graves of a small cemetery beneath the dark volcanic mountains of Qeqertarsuaq, on Disko Island.

At the Edge of Oqaatsut

A small red building and a solitary deck chair sit at the edge of Oqaatsut, facing the icebergs of Disko Bay.

Cemetery in Winter, Oqaatsut

In 2017, Oqaatsut had just 37 inhabitants. Its cemetery lies on the edge of the tiny settlement, almost disappearing beneath the winter snow.

Human Traces, Oqaatsut

A small building and a group of kayaks sit among lichen covered rocks on the coast of Oqaatsut, tiny human traces within a much larger landscape.

At the Edge of the Ice, Ilulissat

Small figures stand beside fractured sea ice near Ilulissat, while three fishing boats make their way through the ice in the distance, continuing the daily work of reaching the open sea.

Living with Ice, Ilulissat

In Ilulissat, icebergs are part of the everyday horizon. Here, one towers just offshore, dwarfing the houses and showing how closely the town lives alongside the moving ice.