The glacier remembers.
It knows how the sky smelled of volcanic ash
and how clouds of dust gently settled on it,
forming layers of sediment trapped in ice.
All of this is recorded in its interior.
In air bubbles, now popping like old film,
as heat seeps into eternity.
These tongues of ice that extend into valleys are not just
water in solid form. They are the planet’s slow movement.
They are its breath. Its patient writing of
stories in layers, one after another, like
a diary written by time.
And now the climate is relentlessly erasing this diary.
Words disappear, letters drip into the ocean, sentences float into
the sky. Everything long-lasting becomes sudden. The hours of geological
time have begun to tick to the rhythm of short human time.
Okjökull Glacier, the first Icelandic glacier to officially lose its glacier status,
has become a symbol. In 2019, locals and scientists gathered for a commemorative
ceremony to bid farewell to the dead glacier. They installed a memorial
plaque – a reminder to future generations and to us all: "It is expected that in
the next 200 years all our main glaciers will follow the same path. This memorial plaque
is an acknowledgment that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. But only you know
if we did it."
In my photographs, glaciers are not just landscapes, but bodies – alive,
vulnerable, disintegrating. Their cracks are wounds, black layers of ash and dust are
scars, their loss of volume is the process of aging, of slow dying.
Through the lens, both their grandeur and fragility are captured. Present is
the sublimity of nature, and also a quiet melancholy – the awareness that we might be
seeing this for the last time.
And even though the series carries a sense of loss, it is not without hope. Photography as a tool
for observing and remembering makes it possible for what is disappearing not to vanish without a trace.
It can become a means of awareness, mobilization, maybe even change.
Every image that evokes feeling is a step toward sensitivity.
And sensitivity is the beginning of responsibility.
Here we see a landscape that is no longer fully glacial, nor yet
fully earthly and rocky. Somewhere in between. It seems as though
everything is slowed down, sunken into silence. The light in this
photograph does not illuminate, but reveals – layers of time, rain grooves,
traces of melting. There is no color – and this is not just the result of black-and-white
photography. It is a decision: removing color means removing the
illusory impression of idyllic landscape and preserving the truth
as it is. Raw and unmasked.
This series began as a visual record – but quickly became
an internal question. What does it mean to bear witness? How long can we
observe before we ourselves become responsible?
While photographing, I often felt torn between
awe and sadness. I hope these images will evoke
similar feelings in you. Each of these photographs is not just a document of a place,
but testimony to a moment of change. These are not just
images of nature, but visual evidence of impermanence.
They do not only speak of the beauty of glaciers, but also
of their quiet, unstoppable loss.
