Lögberg-Heimskringla - 10.09.1999, Blaðsíða 4

4 » Lögberg-Heimskringla « Friday 10 September 1999
Spotlight
on ...
Páll Stefánsson
ls there a member of the lcelandic
community you would like to see
recognized? Send articles and photos
to L-H c/o our address on page 2.
My Lancl
This spring photographer Púll
Stefánsson launches Land, a new book
ofphotographs which represents a per-
sotial view of lceland. He discusses his
work and vision with Richard
Middleton.
OF ALL THE PHOTOGRAPHERS
working in Iceland today, none
has fashioned an image of the
country so perfectly as Páll Stefánsson.
His photographs are everywhere: in
books, advertisements, and, of course,
in Iceland Review.
It could be said that Stefánsson’s
photographs have helped establish the
identity of the magazine, where he has
worked for almost twenty years.
Flicking through past issues, one is
immediately impressed by the sheer
quality of the pictures, images which
define the strange and awe-inspiring
beauty of Iceland.
This spring, Stefánsson launches
Land, a new book of photographs, his
fourth. In three languages, Land con-
tains more than sixty full colour photo-
graphs which represent Stefánsson’s six
favourite areas of his homeland, name-
ly Norður-Þingeyjarsýsla, Vatnajö-
kull, Vestfirðir, Landmannalaugar,
Snæfellsnes, and the Langisjór area.
“Land is the most personal of all
my books,” says Stefánsson. “But don’t
ask me to choose a favourite from the
six areas. That’s like asking someone
with six children which one they love
the most.”
Stefánsson was bom on a farm in
Öxarfjörður, north Iceland—“as close
as you can get to the Arctic Circle in
Iceland.” As a child he moved with his
parents to Reykjavík, but summer holi-
days were spent at his birthplace. It was
here, close to the waterfall Dettifoss
and surrounded by mountains and black
sandy beaches, that his understanding
of and sensitivity towards the Icelandic
landscape was formed.
Aged thirteen, Stefánsson already
knew he wanted a career which was
creative, and he began to consider jour-
nalisrn. Work experience followed with
assignments in print and radio joumal-
ism. “But I saw that the most fun was
being had by photographers, so that’s
what I decided I wanted to be,” says
Stefánsson, who attended a photogra-
phy college in Sweden after leaving
school in Reykjavík.
Returning to Iceland, Stefánsson
was considering whether to continue
with his studies, perhaps in America,
when he approached lceland Review for
some freelance work. One assignment
led to another, and when the magazine
decided to employ its first staff photog-
rapher, Stefánsson seemed the natural
choice. Recalls lceland Review publish-
er Haraldur J. Hamar: “Páll was just
what we were looking for. His enthusi-
asm, his versatility and his sheer pro-
fessionalism was ideal for the maga-
zine. He has been instrumental to its
success ever since.”
In 1987, Stefánsson produced his
first book of photographs, Light. It was
followed by Iceland - island - Island
four years later, and then by Panorama
in 1996, which topped the best-seller
list in Iceland. Stefánsson says his
country is a unique place for taking pic-
tures. “For one thing, because the
weather is so changeable, the landscape
is never the same,” he says. “And then
because we are so close to the Arctic
Circle, the light is so extraordinary.
And this too is changing all the time.”
Stefánsson says that a good photog-
rapher takes pictures not with the brain,
but with the heart and soul. And the
stress involved in securing a particular
moment in nature on film is always
prevalent. “Even now, seventeen years
after I first began taking pictures, I am
never sure of the result, I’m always
anxious,” he says. “Usually I am very
disappointed but then, three to four
days later, I see something that I didn’t
see in the beginning.”
Not that the layman would ever
notice, of course. Stefánsson’s photo-
graphs—from images of the Icelandic
highlands to portraits of Icelandic char-
acters—have an almost luminous feel
to them, a timelessness that is both
haunting and satisfyingly spiritual. His
talents are widely sought: hardly a year
passes without TV cameras arriving in
the Iceland Review offices to interview
Stefánsson; he has even featured in a
TV commercial.
Stefánsson mainly uses Leica cam-
eras and photographs in natural light
without use of filters. His tip for the
“point and shoot” photographer?
“Don’t worry about wasting film. You
learn from experience. The more pic-
tures you take, the better photögrapher
you will become.”
This article originally appeared in the
February 1999 issue of Iceland Review.
Reprinted with permission.
<hi ir nnh* Rin* xm fcw' mri u r*rar Ntir'rarm ^ nnt \ nn wranMr