It was the settler Ásbjörn Özurarson, nephew of Iceland’s first settler Ingólfur Arnarson, who claimed the Greater Hafnarfjördur area. Now, twelve hundred years later, photographer Pétur Thomsen (1973) presents a very different Settlement in Hafnarborg, the Hafnarfjördur Art Museum. This photo series, which Pétur has been working on in recent years, explores the Anthropocene era and features new photographic works that utilize both the creative and investigative aspects of photography to address humanity’s impact on the Earth—how humans use and exploit the land—and the traces left by human activity on nature. Here, he focuses his lens on the surface of the Earth, disrupted in one way or another. The images are taken at night using flash photography, which defines and adds a mysterious tone of looming danger. This powerful exhibition prompts us to think forward and backward in time, perhaps even before the days of Ásbjörn Özurarson, when Iceland was uninhabited by humans.
Hafnarfjördur 11/14/2024: RX1R II, A7R IV – 2.0/35mm Z, FE 1.8/20mm G
Images & text: Páll Stefánsson
