Iceland review - 2019, Page 75

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Iceland Review
THE BAD, AND
THE UGLY
“I want to approach all my projects in a neutral way. Not just show
the beautiful, but also the ugly, show everything, warts and all. I’ve
always been interested in the things that aren’t obvious, what isn’t
visible to everyone,” says photographer Sigurþór Hallbjörnsson,
better known as Spessi. His books about Iceland give readers
another view of the country, and the nation, than they’re
accustomed to. For his first book, Bensín, published in 1999, he
photographed petrol stations all over Iceland. In 2007, he published
Location, featuring places and buildings fit for a movie set. A year
later came Chicken fajitas in the Manner of Google, Mexican
Corn Soup and Chocolate Ice Cream, where he photographed
lunch trays returned to a Reykjavík cafeteria kitchen after a busy
afternoon. In his newest book, 111, Spessi dives deep into life in
Breiðholt, a neighbourhood of Reykjavík originally built in the
’60s to combat a severe housing shortage. Lately, it’s a become a
multicultural hotspot – almost nowhere in Iceland can you find as
many residents of foreign origin.
Spessi claims he always needs to have a fully developed idea of
his projects before he can get to work. “I need to create a frame
around the project, almost like a script.” Still, he notes that simply
finding a title can be enough to get him started. “A strong title
is as good as a script. When I saw a 111 tattoo on this guy I was
photographing, it sparked an idea. I found out that a lot of people
from Breiðholt have 111 tattooed on them, and I realised I’d found
a focal point for the project. The triple one is not only Breiðholt’s
postal code, but also a uniting symbol for a large part of its
population. “There are several postal codes in Reykjavík, but this is
one of the few that people will get tattooed on their skin. No one has
104 or 108. There’s solidarity in Breiðholt.”
Breiðholt has an active sports scene, and Spessi used the local
football club as his way into the community. “Football is the spark
of hope in the neighbourhood. I started showing up to football
practices to photograph the teams and the kids there. I wanted to
enter the culture through the teenagers. They are Icelandic and
speak Icelandic. From there I really wanted to get into their homes
and meet their parents, many of whom are immigrants and might
speak broken Icelandic – half Icelandic, half something else. If there
was a grandmother in the home, you’d have reached the homeland
entirely. I thought this was very exciting, how you could travel
through the generations back to the origin.” According to Spessi,
Breiðholt is an interesting part of Iceland, but you can find versions
of Breiðholt all over the world.
Spessi is fascinated with the culture of the neighbourhood, the
tolerance, and the people, but in the two-year period he was taking
the photos for 111, he also saw its dark sides. He met a drug dealer
and followed him on a sales mission where he was selling people
crack. “Walking into an apartment filled with young people using
drugs was hard. I heard the owner of the apartment, a young girl,
talk about how she needed to take her daughter to the dentist
the morning after, and the idea of a child in a place like that made
me uneasy.” The girl contacted him a month later to ask how the
book was going, worried that the photos would be printed or show
up in an exhibition. “She was on the street by then, had lost the
apartment, and was in an even worse position.” Spessi claims the
only way to work under such circumstances is to approach the
project as a neutral voyeur and chronicler. Still, he never printed
the photos of that young group.
Most of the time, Spessi enters difficult situations with ease,
letting his camera lead the way. His interest in motorcycle culture
led him to the United States where he shot motorcycle clubs.
“You get to experience the culture as a spectator, without being a
direct part of it. Getting into a motorcycle club and being trusted
without having to pay your dues and do what the members had to go
through, it’s a privilege. It was the same in Breiðholt: I shot a weed
farm in one of the apartments and people using hard drugs. This is
a life that no one sees unless they’re a part of it themselves.” Direct
proximity to people and their world is essential to the success of
his work. A little while ago, Spessi shot a documentary project in
Latvia. “I didn’t speak the language, so I needed to have a translator
at all times, an intermediary in all my communication. In the end I
felt I couldn’t come close enough to the people I was photographing.
I couldn’t get past that line I needed to cross. That line where you
stop looking at people and things from the outside but instead
enter people’s private spaces. That’s what I think is most exciting,
but at the same time, it can be an uncomfortable space to work in.”
Spessi says the people who know the world he’s trying portray
agree that his work shows the truth, even if it isn’t always pretty.
“When my publisher saw the photos of Breiðholt, he said: ‘This is
the new Iceland.’ He’s got a point. This incredible mix of people
means that there’s a lot of tolerance and no xenophobia. They’re
way ahead of the development. All of Iceland will be like this in the
future.”
Photography by Spessi