The Last Frontiers: Adventure and Belonging in the Anthropocene

Abstract

In this photographic essay, I explore the romantic pursuit of happiness in Svalbard and Patagonia—places imagined as among the world’s last remaining wilderness areas. I use the camera as a tool to contrast and compare ways of life in these sites, drawing on the analytical category of dwelling-mobility in a visual approach to landscape, transience, settler ethos, history, exploration, community, home, globalization, spirituality, and future. The research draws on critical perspectives that examine the changing conditions of the good life under global capitalism and non-dualist, phenomenological, and ecological approaches that situate our relation to the world at the centre of contemporary notions of happiness.