In 2003 a 19-year-old Native American woman was found dead in an abandoned gold mine in Nome Alaska. Two years later, Nome police officer Matthew Clay Owens was convicted of her murder. Soon after his arrest, I was sent to photograph Nome for a magazine that went out of business before my essay was published. The place has haunted me ever since. More than any other location I’ve traveled in America, Nome evokes an authentic feeling of frontier rawness. So when Vice Magazine asked me if there was a place I wanted to travel, my first choice was to return to Nome.

Part of what attracts me to Nome...