I seek to explore the interplay between absence and presence, humanity and nature, and past and present. Through my imagery, I invite viewers to contemplate the delicate equilibrium between human activity and the natural world.
ABOUT
me & my
woRK
And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
// Roald Dahl
me
NAME: IRIS THORSTEINSDOTTIR
Inspired by the ethereal beauty of Iceland’s landscapes and the rich tapestry of its folklore, I seek to evoke atmosphere and emotion in a natural way through my photography. My images reflect not only the external landscapes but also the inner landscapes of the human experience.
Work
Central to my photographic work is an exploration of the interplay between absence and presence, humanity and nature, and past and present. My lens captures not just moments frozen in time but the intricate tapestry of emotions woven between landscapes and their inhabitants. Through my imagery, I invite viewers to contemplate the delicate equilibrium between human activity and the natural world.
My works have exhibited at institutions such as the SFMOMA Artist Gallery in San Francisco, the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and the Hay Hill Gallery in London, as well as being in private collections across Europe, North America, and Australia.
In addition to my exhibitions, my photographic contributions have found their way into various publications, including National Geographic, The Sunday Times, The New York Times, Gestalten Books, The Guardian Travel, San Francisco Magazine, House and Garden, Cabin Porn, Good Homes Magazine, Ideal Home, Travel and Leisure, and Conde Nast Traveler, among many others.
PLACES
The mind is a mirror on which the world outside is reflected. Residue from our common visual experiences projects associations back onto the lens through which we see. Reflections are often used in reference to contemplating the present through associations with the past. Merging today’s experiences with yesterday’s creates a new matrix of associations, a new understanding or idea.
History and traces of that history play a big part in my work, and the idea of how evidence of human presence can be written into the environment. The subjects of my images are landscapes and the houses or homes of people that are long gone. I am interested in the human presence in the landscape of a space. Lucy Lippard defines a place in her book, “The Lure of the Local,” as where memory and space are combined. The story of a place is told with its scars, marks, and elements left behind from those who occupied it. I believe that the memory of a place can also be created through associated memories from yourself, reflecting on your own past.
We are constantly trying to find our place in this world, and when thinking back in time, we refer to places as defining elements in our memories. These places host desires and longings associated with our own memories and experiences. We read spaces according to our desire to belong and understand the world around us. According to Lippard, “We are living today on a threshold between a history of alienated displacement from and longing for home and the possibility of a multi-centered society that understands the reciprocal relationship between the two.”
My work is about merging my own visual memories with their associated elements to forge a new understanding of each component and their sum. I am recording history, but at the same time, I am writing my own version of the story through the use of my instrument and therefore manipulate the formal aspects of the image. Since it is a still image, the work illustrates only the moment of the unexpected existence of both ‘places’ interlaced, and the tension produced by the moment. The viewer’s perception is challenged and taken out of familiar context, creating a dreamlike atmosphere and inviting the experience of new interpretations.
(Lippard, Lucy. The Lure of the Local. The New York Press, NY. p.20)
Blog
I create compositions from our environment, blending reflections in windows to form mystical scenes that merge reality with our imagination. Using controlled arrangements and unconventional combinations, I aim to evoke dreamlike qualities in my photos.
In my work I’ve tried to orchestrate elements from our common environment into a composition that, like music, exists for its own sake, without regard to moral or didactic issues. In connection to painting my work might fall under magic realism, photographs of realistic style of imaginary or fantasy scenes or images. The work is created with reflections captured in windows. Images from the inside and outside, forward and backward meet and together form a new combination of elements that interplay with each other. They exist only on the two dimensional surface of that window which acts as a thin slice that moves through space capturing selected elements of the world around it and bringing them together into one image.
These elements are controlled arrangements according to the laws of chance. But the juxtaposition of the elements and their unnatural combination creates the effect of dreamlike or incongruous quality, which is the effect that I desire and capture with my camera. I am not trying to recreate reality but to fuse images originating in the physical world with the viewers imagination. They blur the distinction between the real and the fabricated. I use the reflections as a tool to get the desired effect to create the magic of a new mystical world.