ISK

Iceland experienced the deepest and most rapid financial crisis ever recorded in the world (during peacetime) when its three major banks collapsed within few weeks of each other during the fall of 2008. The crisis had serious consequences: the national currency had free fallen in value; heavy restrictions are on all foreign currency transactions, and the stock market dropped tremendously.

All signs of physical progress had ceased within the country. Construction had been halted mid-way, brand new homes were vacant, as were shopping centers and business offices. The result was an abandonment of a previously optimistic-minded model of contemporary life. It was a world devoid of humans and yet covered with the straight, clean lines of their architectural forms– which both complimented and contradicted what the rest of the world knew of Iceland– its landscape.

These photographs are my attempt to understand this new landscape, and how Icelanders can learn from this new landscape in the same way we have historically learned from the land in our culture.