LinksFreitag, April 18, 2014, 10:57 - ISLAND / ICELAND
... to accompany the annual photo exhibition of the Icelandic Photographers Association.Link: [mbl.is]
... and appreciate that there is more to this country than the resentment brought by the crash and its catalysts.
And what do this year's prize photographs tell us about Icelandic society?
Firstly, the fact that the photo of the year is a portrait image is a welcome change, and that the portrait features a foreign woman that most Icelanders are not familiar with, and will never in their lives meet with. Who is this woman? What is she thinking? What is she doing here?
For those that do not recall her from the news, all these questions no doubt spring forth and each will attempt individual answers, or resolve to leave the questions unanswered. And now that tourism in Iceland has increased to the degree it has, perhaps there is a sense in which the photograph is symbolic - a foreigner has arrived to visit Iceland; amiable and appears as a warm person, but simultaneously she seems a little surprised by what she beholds, and is there a trace of agony in the contours of her face, issuing from somewhere deep in her expression?
What might be the reason for that?
In fact, that does have an answer: She went lost in the West Fjords for two days, but she was fortunately found, alive and well. She arrived, got lost, and reemerged. No wonder the expression affords so many interpretations.
-Illugi Jökulsson