Iceland Wintertide

by David Freese (Photographer), Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir (Afterword)

Overview

A unique rendering of Iceland in winter by a renowned award-winning photographer and writer, who examines Iceland in the context of climate change and how this has severely affected the country's iconic landscapes and way of life.

Gold Winner of the 2022 IPPY Awards in Europe—Best Regional Nonfiction

When winter snows cover Iceland in a sea of white, this volcanic island is transformed into an enchanting visual masterpiece. Ironically, the white blanket reveals even more clearly the landscape’s incredible geological formations, ever-changing atmospheric conditions, and remote human settlements, eliciting a natural human response of wonderment to a country that rests precariously on two tectonic plates in the North Atlantic Ocean just below the Arctic Circle.

A small jewel of a book, Iceland Wintertide is a powerful coda to photographer David Freese’s Trilogy of North American Waters as the threats and ramifications of a warming climate steadily increase worldwide but noticeably in Iceland. By showing us what humankind is on the brink of losing as seen in this unique and special place, his images inspire awareness and even action in the face of those who deny climate change only to protect their special interests.

Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, the renowned novelist, poet, and playwright from Iceland, concludes the book with a heartfelt afterword, adding her voice to the persistent warnings and alarms that have gone unheeded worldwide by too many for too long. As a citizen of Iceland, her testimony is that of a compelling witness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938086830
Publisher:	George F Thompson Publishing
Publication date:	12/14/2021
Pages:	88
Sales rank:	1,133,415
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.00(d)
Language:	Icelandic

About the Author

David Freese has spent the last sixteen years photographing North America’s major waters, resulting in a trilogy of books: West Coast: Bering to Baja (2012), East Coast: Arctic to Tropic (2016), and Mississippi River: Headwaters and Heartland to Delta and Gulf (2020). His prints are in many collections, including the Center for Creative Photography, Cleveland Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Haggerty Museum of Art, and Library of Congress, and his photographs have appeared in Communication Arts, Photo District News, Photo Insider, Polaroid International, Popular Photography, Smithsonian Air and Space, and View Camera magazines.

Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, who was born in Reykjavik and studied art history at the Sorbonne in Paris, is a well-known Icelandic novelist, playwright, and poet. Her six novels include Ör (Hotel Silence) (2016; English translation, 2018), which was awarded the Nordic Council Literature Prize, and Ungfrú Ísland (Miss Iceland) (2018).

Editorial Reviews

"In an intriguing way, David Freese's color photographs of Iceland's black-and-white wintertide enclose many dimensions of time. They store the time of the past, which can be associated with the timelessness of nature without man and manifests itself in horizontal layers of volcanic rock, stacked on top of each other, windswept mountains with contrasting personal traits, black lava fields, and tree twigs protruding through the snow. But they also capture the present with fenceposts and power lines, a red roof under a powder-blue sky and a blue tractor, a few trees planted by a farm and a village snuggling under a steep mountain. In Freese's photographs people are like little black strokes, the size of matches, under an immense sky. They not only remind us that nature is bigger than man, but also that, although man cannot survive without nature, nature can cope perfectly well without man."

Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

"Looking at David Freese's images of Iceland reminds me that the longest season is full of surprises. Like a sea full of blue ice, a red roofed church in a blizzard, a tiny horse and rider under the heaviest sky, a frozen waterfall, a plowed road cutting through the land, a glimpse of a lake beneath cliffs made soft by snow conjuring up a Georgia O'Keefe painting of Lake George. I look again and again at the pictures and I don't just imagine that I am transported to this otherworldly landscape, I can actually hear the muffled sounds and the strange quiet that comes with the weight of winter. The experience of looking at these photographs is enough."

Ann Jastrab

"Iceland Wintertide is a cinematic ode to the vastness of Icelandic land, sea, and skyscapes. The muted tonalities give all the information we need to realize how ephemeral things are—global warming has caused Iceland's glaciers to lose seven percent of their surface (290 square miles/751 square kilometers) since the turn of the millennium. David Freese's elegant documentation of this Arctic region gives us the contemplative space to understand the responsibilities we ideally carry."

Laura Moya

David Freese has traveled the globe considering our planet—its waterways, coastlines, and natural and built environments. His work is revelatory, with an insistence on unique perspectives that examine place. His newest effort, Iceland Wintertide, reflects those same efforts, but this time he captures obscured landscapes covered in snow and ice in heroic geologic and atmospheric vistas. His palette of desaturated winter colors reveals a humbling magnificence. Yet Freese also reminds us, in the shadow of such remarkable beauty, of the fragility of our earthly environments in the midst of climate change.

Aline Smithson