In 2015, Julia Baier travelled to Iceland. In this series she responds to the Icelandic landscape in a very unusual way.
Iceland is set on two continental plates that are drifting apart, while in this process shaking the grounds, causing volcanoes to erupt and water to boil. The landscape is extreme; black lava rocks meet snow, moss meets solid slabs of stone, hot waters meet cold air. Julia Baier found a photographic equivalent for this brittleness in imagery creations that come into being through the use of the panorama function of her cell phone camera. She took pictures of Iceland while using the car’s motion instead of her own, which resulted in wayward pictures.
The camera reinvents, copies arbitrarily, omits, drifts, condenses time – realistic pieces of the rolling landscape are capsulated with the ragged, accidential fragments and hence, form new, unusual landscapes.
The outcome are mysterious pictures with almost painted or filmlike qualities that question our way of looking at nature while seeming to complete the myths that surround Iceland on a pictorial level –and besides point to the fragility of today’s nature.
