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Artist Statement
When people think of Iceland, they usually think of ice. What stayed with me was not the ice itself, but the water that came from it. In this body of work, the subject is water and its force which shapes everything around. 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, a condition in which tissue under the palm thickens and tightens, causing one or more fingers to gradually bend toward the palm. When I traveled to Iceland in July 2024, I knew that more surgery lay ahead and that my ability to keep working 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.