Michael A. Smith - Iceland: A Personal View, Vol. 2

Michael A. Smith - Iceland: A Personal View, Vol. 2

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Photographs and Preface by Michael A. Smith
Foreword by Omar Ragnarsson
Essay by Jens Erdman Rasmussen

Publication: 2015
79 reproductions, 108 pages
9" x 17"

Regular Hardbound Edition of 500 Copies
Special Limited Slipcase Edition of 100 Copies
ISBN: 978-1-888899-79-4

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In 2004, 2006, and 2010 photographers Paula Chamlee and Michael A. Smith loaded their several hundred pounds of camera gear into their old Land Rover and shipped it to Iceland where they travelled and photographed throughout the country for months at a time. Although Chamlee and Smith photographed in many popular places, such as Jokulsarlon, they also made many photographs far from the beaten trail. Their photographs in these books represent each photographer's personal view of the extraordinary island country of Iceland.

In this two-volume set of books, Chamlee's 8x10-inch photographs (along with one 4x5) are reproduced in Volume I, and Smith's 8x20-inch photographs and 8x10s in color are reproduced in the long-format Volume II. A Foreword by the noted Icelander Omar Ragnarsson is included in both volumes as is the essay, "This is Not a Landscape," by Jens Erdman Rasmussen, former Curator of Photography at the National Museum of Photography in Copenhagen. Chamlee and Smith have each written prefaces for their respective volumes. Also included in Volume I is a DVD with Chamlee's film, “Elements.”

Omar Ragnarsson writes in his Foreword, "Smith's and Chamlee's photographs are not the usual pictures of Iceland you might see in magazines or on calendars. Their photographs seem timeless . . . there is always something new to discover each time you look at them. There is a special energy in Iceland, and this is an energy that Chamlee's and Smith's art both draws on and conveys. The distant views and the close-up details are of Iceland for sure, but they are also about much more—the rhythms of life and nature everywhere."

And Jens Erdman Rasmussen writes in his essay, "In an uncompromising way, Paula Chamlee and Michael A. Smith tell us about how we perceive the world rather than show us the world itself. Exactly that fact makes their photographs very different from the pictures that usually surround us. What you see in these photographs is not a landscape. It is a landscape seen and heard by Paula Chamlee and Michael A. Smith. Now it's up to you to look at them and listen to them. Should you choose to see them only as landscapes, only as images of the world, I can hardly blame you; who would not dream of standing where the two photographers have stood, and of seeing what they have seen? But try anyway to take their eyes with you into your own world and see as they have seen."