Skiing the Prairie

The typical ski magazine travel story is assembled with predictable components: Photographer and/or writer fly to an exotic destination with a pro athlete or two, they chase the best snow and locations, grab a few shots of local color, and the job is done. And that’s exactly how things were unfolding for Kari Medig on his very first ski assignment in 2007, when he found himself in Gulmarg, Kashmir.

Thing was, Gulmarg’s main lift was old and unreliable and would shut down for days upon days. To keep working, and to feed his curiosity, Medig started shooting local skiers who caught his eye, like the Indian honeymooners he met, and he spent two weeks immersing himself in the Kashmiri ski community. Using medium format film, which is expensive to buy and equally so to process, he took a slower, more methodical approach, shooting fewer frames and spending more time composing, and what he saw through his viewfinder turned out to be less about skiing