Iceland review - 2006, Blaðsíða 13

10 VIEWS OF ICELAND VIEWS OF ICELAND 11
VIEWS OF ICELAND: This Quarter’s News from Home and Away. Compiled by Iceland Review Staff
Don’t expect to see the usual glut of f lawless landscape photographs,
portraits of rosy-cheeked children and otherwise fairytale pictures of
Iceland when you check out Dutch photographer Rob Hornstra’s “Roots
of the Rúntur,” now on display at the National Gallery of Photography.
His photographs, which have also been published in a book of the same
title, open a sobering window into the daily lives of both young and old
Icelanders and migrant workers, mostly Polish, living and working in
small fishing villages sprinkled around Iceland’s rugged coast.
The exhibit also introduces its uninitiated audience to the Icelandic
phenomenon of the rúntur – a slow, circuitous route taken by car.
Imagine American Graffiti on a much – much – smaller scale. It’s funny,
it’s strange and it’s also symbolic of the boredom and monotony among
youth in the far-f lung corners of the country. Gone are the days of young
Icelanders filleting cod, haddock or salmon for packaging and shipment
to faraway lands. Instead they invest their time and money jazzing up
cars, boozing and hanging out at the nearest petrol station.
“It totally blew my mind when I saw it for the first time in the far east of
Iceland,” Hornstra told me from his home in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
“No Icelander will tell you about the rúntur because they just think it’s
normal.”
For many teenagers in remote Icelandic villages, the car is the party, the
girl magnet, the first kiss and the swirling center of all social engagements.
Sometimes it’ll be two or three cars, sometimes ten or 15. Though they
drive it for hours, the route is seldom longer than 500 meters around. More
often than not, it’s the same circle their grandparents once walked.
It’s through this lens that Hornstra attempts to document the social
changes of Iceland. “My book is not just about the rúntur, but about
the changes in Iceland right now,” he says. “The elderly are talking a
lot about how it was in the early days. They’re complaining about the
changes in the villages, and the fact that their villages are emptying.”
If you read between the lines of Hornstra’s social documentary photography
– the abandoned interiors of homes, the disintegration of corrugated tin
buildings, the yellow hues illuminating the local petrol stations – there’s
more depicted than a mere snapshot of the everyday: Hornstra manages to
portray despair in contemporary life.
In 2005, Hornstra, 30, was one of six photographers commissioned by
the International Photography Research Network at the University of
Sunderland (UK) to engage in a themed project called “Work.” The idea
was to look at work within the fast-developing European context. After
countless hours of research and interviews last summer with Icelandic
students and expats living in the Netherlands, he set off for his first of
two trips to Iceland with the idea that he would document immigrants
in the fishing villages. After hearing about the rúntur on his second
journey, he managed to befriend a young art student with a car, and off
he went. SB
The National Gallery of Photography at the National Museum of Iceland
(until June 11). Sudurgata 41, 101 Reykjavík. Tel. +354 530 2200
REVOLVING
IN REYKJAVIK
PHOTO BY ROB HORNSTRA