Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.08.2014, Qupperneq 32

32 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 11 — 2014ART
Stuart, an American who has been living in
Reykjavík for almost six years, photographs
the plethora of lamps that light the way
when the city is cloaked in darkness for
sometimes up to 20 hours a day. ‘Sodium
Sun,’ his series currently up in the National
Museum through December, started a
November day in 2011, “very much out of
cabin fever,” he says. He walked outside
to photograph something, anything, and
was struck by the lights. Stuart had lived
in New York City before coming here
and was shocked at how well lit Iceland
is comparatively. “I think it’s aesthetically
interesting, I think they’re pretty,” he says,
“but the lights are so unsettling from an
environmentalist standpoint.”
Light Pollution
The four photos on display at the museum
are large format rectangular prints hung
along a wall next to the cafe. All of them
feature a winter landscape, though Stuart
has taken hundreds of photos, some
in the summer, some in the winter. The
starburst glow of each light stands out
in stark contrast to the deep blue of the
sky, the blaze obscuring the definition of
everything behind it.
He has colour corrected the photos
to remove the orange cast of the sodium
bulbs, but hasn’t done any other major
editing. “The artificial light is drowning
out the natural light,” he says. In a picture
of an abandoned construction site, he
notes that you can just barely see the
mountain looming behind the double row
of streetlights that lead to nowhere. “You
just get a claustrophobic winter feeling,”
he says of being inside the light. “Once
you get out from under the streetlights,
then you can see the aurora, then you can
see the stars.”
This light pollution is only one of
Stuart’s concerns about the multitude
of lamps all over the country. He started
to think about urban sprawl and
wasted energy as he photographed this
series, noticing the inefficiency in the
placement of the lights, which seem to
be constructed in such great numbers
just because they can be. “In other places
where they’re worrying about energy
consumption or cost of construction, they
think, ‘do we really need all these?’ Here
it seems they don’t think of that. Perhaps
it's because the energy’s very cheap.” The
lamps seem to be laid out without regard
for the most practical way to place them
with unnecessary overlaps, as in his image
of the roundabout surrounded by lights,
though fewer could have been used.
Urban Sprawl
Indicating the photograph on the far right,
Stuart explains that it’s of an overpass
above a road, and that in the hour or so
that he sat there photographing, only three
cars went by. Though he concedes that
perhaps the multitudes of lights are there
and shining all hours a day for those three
cars, he wonders if it’s all really necessary.
He notes that culturally, there is a reason
for this, as historically
Icelanders were a
people always on the
verge of death due to
harsh weather and
lack of money. “And so it makes sense that
the first thing they do when they sort of
develop as a nation is they drive away the
nature.”
What initially attracted Stuart to
Iceland was that untouched nature.
Growing up in the very industrially
developed New England and living in
the even more developed New York City
led him to be attracted to places without
such a saturated state of growth. Iceland
is a country just coming out of isolation,
relatively speaking, and with room for
growth in a number of areas. “It’s one of
the first places I’ve been where not only is
there no one around,
but there’s the sense
that no one has ever
been around,” he
says, “and you just do
not get that feeling in many other places.”
The streetlights marching out into
the beautiful landscape of the Icelandic
winter represent civilization starting to
taint the pure wilderness. There is difficulty
with this issue, because on the one hand,
the desire to preserve the primordial sense
of the world is understandable, but on the
other hand, progress with developing land
and resources will continue regardless of
what anyone wants. Stuart Richardson’s
series asks the viewer to think about this
particular issue in Iceland, one of the final
frontiers.
The Icelandic winter is supposed to be dark and fierce with a view of the stars and sometimes
the Aurora Borealis stretching overhead. It’s cold and windy, sure, but that’s not what both-
ers photographer Stuart Richardson. It’s the garish illumination of the streetlights that have
pervaded the city and are bleeding out into the countryside. “When you’re actually experienc-
ing the Icelandic winter, everything is orange. Everything is the colour of the streetlights,” he
says. “When we experience the winter here, we’re not really feeling, we’re not really seeing
anything outside of these streetlights.”
Photos
Portrait by Alisa Kalyanova, other photos provided by Stuart
Words
Rebecca Scott Lord
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Opening hours September — May
9:00 — 18:00 weekdays
10:00 — 17:00 saturdays
12:00 — 17:00 sundays
Aðalstræti 10, Reykjavík
Museum of Design and Applied Art, Garðabær
(354) 517 7797 — kraum@kraum.is
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Land Of The
Sodium Sun Stuart Richardson captures Iceland’s streetlights
“Once you get out from
under the streetlights,
then you can see the
aurora, then you can
see the stars.”
www.stuartrichardson.comNational Museum of IcelandSodium Sun14
JUNE
31
DECEMBER