American, b. 1959
Coleman Glacier, Mount Baker, 2007, archival inkjet print
Thirty-two years after Eliot Porter’s Mount Baker expedition, Brett Baunton documented Coleman Glacier from a slightly higher vantage point. By comparing the two views, one can see that the mountain’s glaciers have lost close to 20% of their volume in the intervening years.
Baunton, whose photographs have appeared in National Geographic, has devoted much of his career to photographing glaciers. He has climbed Washington’s highest mountains, including Mount Rainier and Mount Olympus. Baunton is currently photographing Mount Baker’s glacial Nooksack River as part of an environmental campaign to designate its pristine waters as a “wild and scenic river.”