Born in 1986, Chris Burkard grew up on California’s Central Coast and knew from a young age that he had to get out. Photography became the avenue. Primarily self-taught, Burkard won the Follow the Light Foundation grant in 2006, and away he went, working as a senior staff photographer for Surfline, Water magazine, and Surfer magazine, as well as freelancing for The New Yorker, National Geographic, and ESPN.com. In 2009, he was contracted by Patagonia to be a projects photographer.
Burkard’s photo books include The California Surf Project, Come Hell or High Water: The Plight of the Torpedo People, Distant Shores, High Tide, and The Boy Who Spoke to the Earth. Along with still photographs, he makes films, including Russia: The Outpost Volume 1, Faroes: The Outpost Volume 2, The Cradle of Storms, and Under an Arctic Sky.
You might glean from those titles that Burkard has a penchant for the colder locales. On that note, he started photographing Iceland about two decades ago—and fell so in love with the place that, a couple years ago, he up and moved there with his wife and two sons. Along with photography, Burkard is also an avid adventurer, recently completing a 90-mile fat-tire bike ride across Vatnajökull, Europe’s largest glacier.
In this episode of Soundings, Burkard talks to host Jamie Brisick about traveling, Ansel Adams, the allure of cooler climates, finding purpose, moving to Iceland, the state of surf photography, and the challenges and rewards of environmentalism.
Produced by Jonathan Shifflett.
Music by PazKa (Aska Matsumiya & Paz Lenchantin).