I began work on this project in the beginning of winter 2012, after having recently relocated to Iceland and during a period in my life marked by profound personal transitions. Setting out on daily trips to the countryside to photograph, I was primarily seeking quiet and solitude to reflect on my current life situation, hoping to find resolve and a sense of direction.
Looking at this project in hindsight, I see that my inner life has found its way into these images, mirroring the existential change I was going through and laying bare the transition in how I experienced the landscape around me. History of the Visit has become a lot more introspective than I ever anticipated, outlining not a concrete, geographical place but rather a personal, imagined zone, where paths lead to nowhere and artificial structures keep on existing, bereft of purpose. This series of images doesn’t offer a clear account of what was going through my mind at the time, but rather fills a gap where words become insufficient. I am interested in this photographic abstraction of thought, where landscape is decontextualized and becomes something else, a canvas for my inner topography.
The areas I visited were mostly accessible by car, only a few hours away from the city and sparsely populated. One of the luxuries of Iceland is that outside the capital, one can travel for hours without meeting anyone. As my work progressed my trips increased in frequency and slowly changed into a repetitive, escapist ritual – an exercise in solitude.
I believe this eventually helped me to make these landscapes my own.