Asheville Photographer Traces a Warming Winter From the Blue Ridge to the Arctic in New Solo Exhibition

Landscape and documentary photographer Tanya Triber opens Vanishing Winters: A Photographic Elegy, a solo exhibition of 17 photographs .

Opening reception on Dec. 5th from 5:00-7:00PM. Beer, wine, and light bites will be served.

The exhibition holds three winters in the same room: the high peaks of the Southern Appalachians, the glaciers and coastline of Iceland, and Norway's Lofoten Islands above the Arctic Circle. The connection between them is older than the ice. The Appalachians and the mountains of Norway were once a single range, raised by the same collision and split when the Atlantic opened between them. Hundreds of millions of years later, they are warming together.

"I photograph winter because it is slowly disappearing, and because looking closely at what remains is the nearest thing to hope I know," Triber said.

The work is built from field seasons rather than a single trip. Triber has photographed Western North Carolina's high country for more than five years, and has worked above the Arctic Circle in Lofoten and across Iceland, shooting in the low light and unstable weather that define a northern winter. The photographs record specific places on specific days. The argument arrives by accumulation. That argument is measurable. North Carolina's winters averaged 43.0°F across 2001 to 2023, up 1.8°F from the twentieth-century average, and six of the eleven warmest winters on record have occurred since 2011, according to the North Carolina State Climate Office. Iceland loses roughly 11 billion tonnes of ice a year; in 2019 the country installed a bronze plaque where the Okjökull glacier had been, the first monument anywhere to a glacier lost to climate change. In Lofoten, the winter cod known as skrei, from the Old Norse for "the wanderer," are spawning farther north than the islands' thousand-year-old fishery was built around.

The Appalachian wall closes the show, and it is the one Triber knows from her own door.

Above roughly 5,000 feet, the Southern Appalachians hold a red spruce and Fraser fir forest left behind by the last ice age, a cold, wet island surrounded by warmer country. Fraser fir grows nowhere else on Earth. As these mountains warm, a forest that has already climbed to the summit has nowhere higher to go.

Triber will be at the gallery to meet visitors every Saturday in December from 1 to 4 PM, and again on closing day, Saturday, January 2. Prints are available throughout the run in sizes from 16x20 to 20x40 inches.

$50 from every print sold will be donated to Protect Our Winters, a nonprofit that unites outdoor enthusiasts to advocate for clean air, clean water, and a healthy planet.