Atlantica - 01.06.2006, Page 61

60 AT L A N T I CA
His award-winning photo is a picture of
nothing.
“It’s hard to capture nothing, but it’s a
strong image,” says Páll Stefánsson, Atlantica
photo editor, about the shot that won the
best landscape photo at the Icelandic Press
Awards 2005. Taken in Höfn, a small fishing
village nestled in the shadow of Vatnajökull,
Europe’s second-largest glacier, Stefánsson’s
Hasselblad reveals a tiny island emerging from
a blue shadow of fog.
The photograph can be found in
Stefánsson’s latest book, simply titled PS. The
collection of photos is not what one might
expect from Stefánsson, who has been photo-
graphing Iceland for over 20 years. In his pre-
vious coffee-table books, his landscape photos
are large in scope, capturing the vastness of
Iceland’s wilderness – Nature dwarfing Man.
“When you’ve done it for so long, the
biggest challenge is coming up with some-
thing new,” Stefánsson says. “In this book,
I was challenging myself to come up with
something that wasn’t scenic and pretty, or
postcardish.”
While the photos contained within the
pages of PS might not be postcardish, they
certainly render a beautiful portrait of the
country’s peculiar landscape, especially the
image of a small glacial lake on Vatnajökull,
which looks like a speck of the Mediterranean
Sea transported to an Arctic tundra.
Stefánsson’s favorite places to capture
magical moments in nature are Dettifoss,
Europe’s most powerful waterfall by vol-
ume, Vatnajökull glacier and Hrafntinnusker,
located in the southern highlands near
Landmannalaugar. PS exposes these vistas
in a different light, creating a new vision of
Iceland.
Published by Edda Press, PS hits book-
stores at the end of June. It will be published
in both Icelandic and English. For more infor-
mation on PS, log on to www.icelandreview.com
or www.edda.is.
Iceland Close Up
ICELANDa
Photos by Páll Stefánsson
Text by Edward Weinman
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