“When I started to focus on landscape photography my idea was to make landscape images that came closer to my experience of being in a landscape. I wanted to focus on the connection and intimacy I felt when I was walking and spending extensive periods of time in nature. The frame I set for myself, was to make images that had a different entry point than the classical landscape photography genre. I removed the camera and started to experiment with photograms. At a visit to the Icelandic Institute of Natural History, I discovered
the thin sections. It is a geological tool normally used for studying the chemical composition and internal structure of lava rocks under a microscope. It is basically a thin slice of rock that is glued with epoxy onto a piece of glass and sanded down until it is transparent. I went immediately to the darkroom and started to experiment with it.

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The mix between being a concrete tool for research and a potential material for artistic language was very exciting to me. To make the actual enlargement I use the classical printing technique in the darkroom along with a lot of experimentation! I guess it was not really before I decided to scale up, that I found some of that intimacy and wildness I felt in the landscapes of Iceland.

My processes are on the one hand very intuitive and on the other hand rational and facts based. Just a side note to my process of working in the darkroom: I worked in complete darkness, because the red light can create some light pollution, when the exposures are long during enlargement onto a big piece of paper. Working in totally darkness I found myself working much more freely and less focused on perfection. I have for instance cut the paper very fast and intuitively, then attached it to a board on the wall, all without being able to see clearly what my hands were doing, so nothing is really straight.

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To me, this process became very liberating. I choose to keep this expression and the process is now part of the image, because I like this rawness, like in nature. The images are made in a period where I was totally immersed in the landscapes of Iceland. Perhaps you can say that the process of making the works is a kind of dance for me. I danced with the images - the large paper - and celebrated the intense power and raw energy I felt in the Icelandic landscape.”

V.G.