Former Nunatsiaq News reporter wins national photojournalism award
Dustin Patar honoured for image he captured on the Milne Ice Shelf
Dustin Patar’s prize-winning photo shows Joseph Shoapik, of Grise Fiord, and Alex Forrest, a limnologist from California, examining a crack in the Milne Ice Shelf. (Photo courtesy of CNW Group/Canadian Journalism Foundation)
A former Nunatsiaq News journalist’s photo of researchers peering into a crack in the Milne Ice Shelf has been awarded a national prize.
Dustin Patar was named winner of the inaugural CJF-Edward Burtynsky Award for Climate Photojournalism for that image he captured, which was published in The Narwhal on Sept. 10, 2022.
The $5,000 award “celebrates provocative, impactful and inspirational climate photography from around the world” based on submissions from across Canada, according to a news release Monday from the Canadian Journalism Foundation.
Patar was a reporter at Nunatsiaq News, based in Iqaluit, from September 2019 through July 2021.
“Dustin’s image conveys a sense of the vastness and magnitude of the challenge facing all of us,” Burtynsky said in the release. “The role of science and geology come through, as do the dangerous warning signs of impending trouble.
“The humane figures bent over the crack in the ice remind us of how small and helpless we are to stop this as it unfolds before our eyes. Dustin’s image should provoke a lot of different conversations and allow for different ways to understand the story.”
The Milne Ice Shelf, near Ellesmere Island, is the second-largest ice shelf in the Arctic Ocean.
The award was launched in December 2022 by the Canadian Journalism Foundation in partnership with Burtynsky, an internationally known photographer and filmmaker.
Patar will be presented the award at the CJF Awards in Toronto on June 13.
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