Iceland review - 2014, Qupperneq 9

ICELAND REVIEW 7
ICON
In the year 1995, photographer RAX (Ragnar Axelsson) went
with farmer Guðjón Þorsteinsson looking for a mink that
was destroying his nearby eider duck nesting ground by Cape
Dyrhólaey.
“Guðjón was so focused on finding the mink that he forgot that
I was running around taking pictures in the foggy storm,” RAX
told me: “What I liked about Guðjón was not only his interesting
character but his face. It was like a map of the good and the bad
times in our history. After the picture was published on the front
page of daily Morgunblaðið, his phone did not stop ringing; every-
one wanted him as an actor in movies and advertisements. He was
like an icon of old Iceland.”
This image is one of many featured in the book Faces of the
North, which Crymogea will publish later this year. There you
will meet—in black and white—the interesting characters from
Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands RAX has been collecting
over the past quarter of a century, first on his Leica M6, and now
on Leica Monochrome.
An exhibition at the Reykjavík Museum of Photography, Mirror
of Life will feature a selection of RAX’s best-known photo series
from the past three decades (May 24 to September 7). *
PS