Where did the snow go? Thought provoking pictures demonstrate the world-wide phenomenon.

By capturing and revisiting old street snowboarding spots around the Helsinki area in Finland, this photographic project is highlighting the lack of snow in the city centers. The project aims to encourage people and companies to join the movement in lowering emission with everyday climate acts.

The electric vehicle charging company Virta Ltd and climate awareness raising Protect Our Winters (POW) has brought attention to the lack of snow in big parts of the world by illustrating the phenomenon through a stunning photographic project.   

“Virta’s mission is to do their part in mitigating the climate change, by making electric vehicles a natural part of the energy system and readily available to everyone and everywhere. We hope that the project’s message would function as encouragement for lowering emission in mobility. Transport is a sector in which greenhouse emission could be drastically lowered in a short amount of time – the solutions are already in place”, says Virta Deputy CEO Elias Pöyry.

The campaign is a part of the collaboration between Virta and POW, in which the two joins forces in making the mobility of tomorrow emission-free and sustainable.

“A couple of years ago I was still able to sustain myself by shooting snowboarders, and the Helsinki capital area was a great place for that. When I was assigned to illustrate the collaboration between Virta and POW, I decided to search through my old work and return to the same spots in the same time of year, but in this winter’s conditions” says Ville Vappula, the photographer behind the project

“The results were even more eye-opening than I originally thought. It’s one of those things you easily take for granted. Helsinki being a winter wonderland has been more of a rule than an exception, which has enabled a diverse urban culture even in the winter. In this project I tried to make the ‘before and after’ -pictures as identical as possible.”, Vappula continued.

The project resulted in five attention-grabbing pictures, where the snowboarders revisit popular snowboarding spots, but in this year’s conditions. The original pictures are mostly taken in February 2012 and the updated pictures in February 2020.