Luminous Icescapes, 2013-14

I've walked a lot in the mountains in Iceland. And as you come to a new valley, as you come to a new landscape, you have a certain view. If you stand still, the landscape doesn't necessarily tell you how big it is. It doesn't really tell you what you're looking at. The moment you start to move the mountain starts to move. ―Olafur Eliasson Luminous Icespaces is a series of photographs developed in Iceland and Alaska. When I visited the Jokulsarlon Glacial Lagoon in the southeast of Iceland, on the borders of Vatnajökull National Park, I was mesmerised by the icebergs that appeared like diamonds scattered on the beach at the beginning of Creation. The fragility of the ice on the beach, where there is unceasing interplay of wave and sand, was very absorbing. Iceland's evolving and surrounding landscapes offer the opportunity of experiencing a hypnotic journey. Its climate, lighting and inherent sound activate your senses in a way you can find all kind of detail, from whispering winds of diamond dust, rainbow reveries to deep sound emanating from under the ice. A series of photographs within this project show scenarios where ice is presented as a sequence of precious gemstones. It aims to emphasize their natural value since they are in some way the solitaire jewels of nature that we need to preserve in order to safeguard arctic environment for the future. Others show ominous, immense rigid walls of ice intermixed with dirt from Alaska, perhaps a metaphor of what the human existence has made to sully the purity of the ice. I try and allow the viewer to experience this dichotomy and form their own opinion of this complex issue of what is happening to the melting of the work's glaciers.