Ilona Wiśniewska: A reportage on flickering at the edge of icy death

Ilona Wiśniewska (1981) is a Polish reporter and photographer living in Norway. She collaborates with major Polish periodicals such as Dwutygodnik, Polityka, and Duży Format. She is the author of four reportage books focusing on the northernmost regions of our planet, including Norway, Greenland, and Svalbard. In 2021, the Slovak translation of her first book Bílé (White), with the subtitle Ledové ostrovy Špicberky (The Ice Islands of Svalbard), was published; it is the first in her “ice trilogy,” for which she received the prestigious Teresa Torańska Award. This was followed by the reportage Hen. Na severu Norska (Hen. In the North of Norway, 2016), named the best travel book of the year by National Geographic. In her book Led (Ice, 2024, Absynt), she travels to a small island off the western coast of Greenland, home to the oldest local orphanage. Through its lens, she seeks to understand the lives of the local people. For this book, she was nominated for the Ryszard Kapuściński Award. In 2022, her second Greenland book Mihotání. Na konci Grónska (Flickering. At the End of Greenland) was published; the Czech edition appeared in 2024 in the Prokletí reportéři (Damned reporters) series by Absynt.