The Longest Sunset
During a flight to Keflavík airport, it is possible to see the sunset for many hours. Staying in Reykjavík during December is like living in a month-long sunset.
What really matters in photography, is feeling free and the ability to shoot without any preconception. The direction will be drawn by intuition and feeling, by having an honest approach and maintaining focus on the quiet secret and intimate relationship between the photographer and the landscape which he has fallen into.
The ancient struggle of the survival of man against nature forms the background for images that don’t try to give answers. These photographs represent natural elements that are deeply connected to the unknown. There is a surreal aspect to the composition that obscures the interpretation of the image.
This project was realized during December 2022 at SÍM Residency in Iceland.
Press (f) to look at the slideshow, or scroll down to see the photos.
Shortlisted at Sony World Photography Awards, professional/landscape category, in 2023.
Icelanders are generally very attached to their country, perhaps more so than most other peoples … It is a love for the land itself in its physical presence, for its soil, mountains, streams, valleys, and even its fire-spewing volcanoes and frozen wastes of ice.
May and Hallberg Hallmundsson
Iceland is a land full of stories of small and large revolutions, such as the Gullfoss nature reserve and an extraordinary woman named Sigrídur Tomasdottir who managed to get the waterfall’s lease with a large foreign power company cancelled.
Or like the so-called ‘silent revolution’ that between 2008 and 2011 led to the downfall of the then government and the investigation of those responsible for a financial crisis that brought the entire nation to its knees, which was caused by speculative management of the Icelandic market and financial system, and allegedly resulted in higher taxation on households.
In 2017 another major revolution led to equal pay for men and women, following protests by all those women who stopped working earlier (depending on the ratio of their salary to men’s) or did not work on the “women’s day off” (Kvennafrídagurinn).
Also in 2017, Katrin Jakobsdottirm, a left-wing ecologist, became prime minister of the island. And how could we not mention Vigdis Finnbogadottir, a single mother who became the world’s first woman elected head of state, in 1980.
Among Iceland’s major revolutions, however, is the one concerning the use of renewable energy sources for this nation that only 50 years ago was still dependent on oil, while today almost all the energy used comes from renewable sources and in particular from hydroelectric and geothermal power plants.
But revolutions, as we know, start with everyday life and in Iceland there is a great respect for the environment, manifested even with simple gestures such as not sitting or walking on the delicate Icelandic moss that grows at the rate of a few millimetres per year.
