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Artist Statement
When people think of Iceland, they usually think of ice. What stayed with me when I photographed there in July 2024 was not the ice itself, but the water that came from it. In this body of work, water is the subject, but it is also the force that shapes everything around it. It cuts through canyons, falls over cliffs, moves across black sand, and carves its way through the landscape. Again and again, I found myself drawn to that motion and to the way it organized the picture.
These photographs focus on waterfalls, rivers, shoreline, rock formations, and open landscape, but they are really about the relationship between movement and stillness, softness and hardness, and the scale between the human body and the natural world. For the first time in decades of photographing, I have come to embrace and deliberately include people. I once felt they detracted from the landscape, but I have learned that they can bring a sense of scale, presence, and sometimes surprise. I was interested in the atmosphere of these places as much as the locations themselves: the mist, overcast light, black sand, moss, and volcanic rock all contribute to a mood that feels both quiet and powerful. In each image, I wanted the viewer’s eye to travel through the frame the same way the water moves through the land.
This portfolio also comes out of a difficult period in my life. After hand surgery in December 2023, I developed Dupuytren’s Contracture in my dominant hand. I went to Iceland in July 2024 knowing that more surgery was ahead and that my ability to photograph might change. Because of that, making these images became more important to me. They are not only a record of place, but also proof that I was still able to do the work I care about under uncertain circumstances.
Although I made this series with different tools depending on weather and physical limitation, what matters most to me is the act of photographing itself: being there, responding to the landscape, and remaining able to work. This body of work is about the force of water, the emotional weight of wild places, and my effort to translate that experience into photographs.