The Print in the Wild
I made these images while artist-in-residence at Klaustrid, East Iceland, in the former home of the Icelandic writer Gunnar Gunnarsson.
During my stay, the Holuhruan Fissure was emitting gas and lava and threatening to erupt: In the west an eerie gassy column, diffusing the light, would move up the valley in long tendrils.
I made images of my immediate surroundings and then returned with the freshly made prints of those images to the same or related place and photographed the juxtaposed print and view again.
Sometimes I lit the print on fire, weaved two prints together or sliced one to pieces all to emphasize an immediate and precarious process.
I am struck by Gunnarsson’s treatment of landscape as another character in his books which in turn act as a catalyst for internal and spiritual exploration.
“Now and then the ice-shoes struck sparks from the stone, so that you could feel in the nose the fire that lurks within all things”
Gunnar Gunnarsson, The Good Shepherd