Iceland review - 2016, Qupperneq 52

50 ICELAND REVIEW ICELAND REVIEW 51
in 2015, she is now studying for a BA in
Fine Arts at the Iceland Academy of the
Arts. “Some people do meditation. But
for me, time in a darkroom working with
my photographs with some music and
a little wine is my kind of meditation,”
she says.
IN THE FAMILY
Photography runs in Kristina’s family.
Whilst helping her mother clear out her
apartment, she came across a pink box of
film shot by her father. From this the col-
lection Patrimony was born, a collection
of her father’s photographs that she feels
mirrors aspects of her own life and her
own style of photography. “His photos
reflect how I remember myself. In my
work, I use his old camera and I try to
shoot with old films.” She shows me a
photograph of a couple. “These are my
parents long before I was born. For me,
it’s an idealized version of my parents in
what could be a difficult relationship.”
The collection Fisherman’s Wife is also
autobiographical. Kristina’s husband
worked briefly as a fisherman in Iceland.
In this series, Kristina explores the sense
of waiting that is the lot of a fisherman’s
wife. In particular, she shares with me
one tense episode. Thanks to the modern
wonders of technology, she was able to
track the fishing boat her husband was
on until it disappeared from the screen.
Fearing her husband was lost at sea, her
many attempts at contacting the vessel
were finally successful and all was well.
POWER OF POETRY AND FILM
Kristina’s work is also inspired by film.
Having seen Solaris, the 1972 Russian
science fiction art film, as a child, she was
mesmerized by the images of a floating
island. This provided the impetus for
over 200 images of mountains in her
ongoing Solaris collection. Here, she
shows her keen eye and her ability to
manipulate magnificent Icelandic land-
scapes as mountains morph into islands,
water mirrors cloud and lakes become
air.
Continuing the theme of being inspired
by film, Kristina visited the EYE Film
Institute Netherlands in Amsterdam,
where she worked with old film in cre-
ating her Decomposition collection. “I was
PHOTOGRAPHY