Sebastian Copeland
Fashion photographer. Music-video director. Arctic explorer. Maybe the only person on the planet who can claim those three jobs is 53-year-old Copeland. After making a name for himself in the New York and L.A. photo worlds, Copeland turned his attention to Earth’s shrinking ice caps. “I realized I could combine adventuring, photography, and activism — the three things that define me as a person,” he says. Since then he’s survived frostbite while walking 430 miles to the North Pole; harnessed the wind to kite-ski across Greenland in 43 days; and become the first person, along with his expedition partner, Eric McNair-Landry, to make a 2,500-mile east-to-west crossing of Antarctica. In 2016 he swapped the Arctic for the desert and pulled a 400-pound cart 404 miles across Australia’s Simpson Desert to shine a light on water issues. But his primary focus will always be the poles. “There’s the famous quote about climbing Everest: ‘Because it’s there,’ ” says Copeland. “Well, in the case of the Arctic, it’s because it won’t be there.”
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