Depths

Fagradalsfjall is located on the Reykjanes Peninsula, one of Iceland's most geologically active areas. Here, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge surfaces, slowly separating the North American and Eurasian plates. After over eight hundred years of relative quiet, in March 2021, the area returned to its volcanic nature with a long effusive eruption that created a new lava valley. For months, magma filled a pre-existing depression, building a crater and completely reshaping the landscape near Grindavík. It was a historic event, not for its violence, but for its duration and accessibility: a rare moment when the formation of the earth occurred before the eyes of the world.

In 2021, I was unable to be present during the eruption. When I arrived the following October, the crater was still hot and fuming, but now silent. The valley already showed initial settling, an apparent calm after the transformation. It left a strong, but incomplete, impression. Just over a year later, in November 2022, I returned with a different question: to understand how that place continued to change, once the visible activity had ceased.

The context had radically changed. No visitors, no trace of human presence. Only wind, cold, and a valley that seemed to have closed in on itself. The initial intention was to fly over the entire area, but conditions made takeoff almost impossible. Only by gradually moving, utilizing the natural protection of a hill, did a brief window open. The wind died down, and at that moment, I was able to launch the drone and take advantage of the last moments of daylight.

Looking into the crater, the valley revealed itself for what it truly is: a structure in transition. The colors, from deep red to mineral yellow, the still-open fractures, the residual fumaroles, told of an intermediate phase. The light that afternoon was suspended, uniform, without sharp contrasts. It imposed no directions or hierarchies but allowed the surface to tell its story without interference. Shadows softened, colors were freed from dominant hues, and every detail emerged with silent clarity.

Over time, these surfaces will cool, oxidize, be colonized by mosses and lichens, until they become part of a new equilibrium.

Depths arises from this awareness. Not as documentation of an event, but as a testament to a passage. An image that exists only because that landscape, at that instant, was still incomplete. In Iceland, volcanic valleys are never definitive: they change, close, regenerate, and this photograph belongs to one of those phases that will not return.