Connect to the Land

Our weekly audio podcast We Are Photographers brings you true stories from behind the lens and behind the lives of your favorite photographers, filmmakers, and creative industry game-changers. From their struggles to their wins, host Kenna Klosterman discovers the real human stories about why they do what they do.

Listen to this and other audio episodes on our audio Podcast page.

As a creator, working in remote parts of the world often requires building relationships with people who rarely interact with outsiders. Cultural norms you are accustomed to won’t necessarily apply. In this episode, Kiliii shares his experience working in the arctic and offers a number of insights to help you build genuine relationships with collaborators, and ultimately, a better-finished project.

Kiliii Yüyan is an award-winning Documentary Photographer and contributor to National Geographic Magazine and other major publications. Informed by ancestry that is both Nanai/Hèzhé and Chinese-American, much of his work explores the human relationship to the natural world from different cultural perspectives. Kiliii is one of PDN's 30 Under 30 Photographers (2019), a National Geographic Explorer, and a member of Indigenous Photograph and Diversify Photo. In addition to being a photographer, Kiliii builds traditional kayaks professionally, has mad primitive survival skills and most of the year can be found working on stories in the circumpolar Arctic.