Grimsey

Publisher's Description

Set on the remote island of Grimsey, twenty-five miles north of mainland Iceland and bordering the Arctic Circle, this series focuses on the lives of a small, insular fishing community in one of the most unique locations on earth. Taken on multiple visits over the course of two years, these images capture the idiosyncrasies of life in a region with a remarkable blend of influences: an Icelandic-Island culture, fixated as much by the prevalence of maritime commerce as it is unbounded by its unique remoteness. Imitating a documentary style, my photographs are heavy with the emotional pull of real lives, yet they embody an especially uneasy sense of familiarity: a product of building upon established traditions in landscape and portrait photography, while also incorporating formal elements of abstract-modernism.

The landscapes and interiors in Grimsey are noticeably self-contained. Small artifacts of life are found everywhere in the series—seagulls, children’s toys, traps and fishing gear—each isolated within one of the island’s immense vistas: stark plaster walls, pastel curtains, grassy fields undulating into cliffs and sea, everywhere united by angular elements of perspective and color. Any individual element of life on Grimsey, perhaps familiar to the audience by itself, somehow resists assimilation in the larger unity of the images. The feeling of resistance found in the series is a testament to the authenticity of the island’s sub-culture, a sense that is completed by the portraits of the denizens themselves, who in their candid humility are, nevertheless, impenetrably distant and wonderfully remote.

Sample images

57 full color plates. Cloth wrapped hardcover. French fold dust jacket printed on uncoated stock.

Publisher: Silas Finch

Size: 9.5 x 11.5"

80 pages