The Story Behind the Photograph
November on the Hudson Bay tundra is a waiting room: the bears gather near the coast, killing time until the bay freezes and the seal hunting can begin. Most of what a photographer sees is sleeping bears, walking bears, and sparring males. Family groups are warier and keep their distance, which is what made this morning extraordinary.
A mother with a single cub had bedded down in the willows near our track in a ground blizzard. The wind was knifing across the flats, and the cub — born only that year — pressed in against her. What she did next is the photograph: she sat up into the wind, swept the cub between her forelegs, and folded herself around it until only its face showed against the great white wall of her chest. The wind howled. The cub blinked at us, perfectly warm. We made our frames in silence and the vehicle moved on before she had any reason to.
About Polar Bear Mothers
A polar bear mother raises her cubs alone for two and a half years, and everything they will ever know — hunting seals at breathing holes, reading ice, riding out storms — they learn pressed against her. Cubs are born helpless in winter dens at barely a pound, and the maternal investment that follows is among the most intensive of any mammal. Polar Bears International, which conducts much of its research right in Churchill, documents how shortening sea-ice seasons squeeze precisely this bond: less ice means leaner mothers, smaller cubs, and harder odds.
The Churchill gathering remains the most reliable place on Earth to witness these families — from tundra vehicles, at distances the bears themselves choose.
Photographer's Notes
Made through blowing snow with a 400mm lens from a tundra vehicle window, exposure opened up to keep the bears white instead of gray — driving snow fools meters badly. The weather that made the moment also made the photograph: in clear calm there is no huddle, and no story. This print and Laid Back Bear were the gallery's two Churchill icons — one for the heart, the other one for the grin.