Reykjavík Grapevine - 03.02.2017, Qupperneq 49

Unbeautiful
Þórsteinn Sigurðsson lights up the shadows
Art Hello Darkness, My Old Friend48The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 02 — 2017
For some, seeing is more than a
sense—it’s a sensation. “It’s pain-
ful to be somewhere, see some-
thing amazing and not be able to
take a photo of it,” photographer
Þórsteinn Sigurðsson says. “The
other day I went food shopping and
on my way back I see a car on fire,
surrounded by some whacked-out
folks. I didn’t have my camera on
me but I could see the photo in my
mind. That’s painful.” The image
fits Þórsteinn’s style perfectly.
The the burning, the wrecked, the
wretched—the sickly beautiful.
Human nature
Photography for him started when
he dropped out of upper second-
ary school and applied for a job at
Hans Petersen, a camera reseller
and developing office. He started
to develop his own skills by pho-
tographing his friends in the
graffiti crew CMF. “I felt a need to
document the lifestyle these guys
were living, which was rather in-
credible, very bohemian for those
times,” he says. On the streets of
an arctic bohemia, Þórsteinn took
root: “I don’t go out much into na-
ture, I stay more within the city.
Ugly, strange neighborhoods are
my favourite.” The city is an eco-
system of its own. That’s why they
call it a concrete jungle.
And Þórsteinn is its vines, de-
liberate and creeping. He weaves
the lines of human nature with
his camera—into corners you
didn’t know or didn’t want to
know. “My photos aren’t taken
when I’m walking my dog,” he
says. “It doesn’t happen often that
material walks in front of me. I go
and find it.”
The darkest hour
In a recent series he photographed
the deceased. “The smell, the bod-
ies in different stages of decom-
position: I couldn’t think about it
like that, it had no effect on me.
The camera was sort of like a
physical and mental shelter. It’s a
good tool to have in difficult situ-
ations, the fear disappears.” His
special access to a local mortuary
resulted in a stunning series of
six true gelatin silver fibre prints.
He’s a documentary photogra-
pher to the core—his inclinations
to photography are physical. He
is “obligated” to photograph what
he feels people might otherwise
not see. Oftentimes those photos
expose a subject slightly unex-
pected, slightly unbeautiful. But
they say that beauty is in the eye
of the beholder, and Þórsteinn’s
got a wicked gaze.
Find Þórsteinn online as xdeath-
row.tumblr.com and follow him on
Instagram @xdeathrow
SHARE: gpv.is/unb02
Words PARKER YAMASAKI Photos ÞÓRSTEINN SIGURÐSSON
I C E L A N D I C R E S T A U R A N T & B A R
Tasty tapas and dr inks by the o ld harbour
T a b l e r e s e r v a t i o n s : + 3 5 4 5 1 7 1 8 0 0 - w w w . f o r r e t t a b a r i n n . i s
Certificate of Excellence
———— 2016 ————
Drawing Spatially
— Raumzeichnung
14.1. - 25.2 2017
Monika Grzymala
bergcontemporary.is
Klapparstígur 16
101 Reykjavík / Iceland
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Padres Internacionales
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