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by Olivier Joly (Photographer), François de Closets (Foreword by)
Since the dawn of time, Iceland tattoos the soul of those who live there. To tread its hyperboreal moors, to survey its deserts and its volcanoes, to be caught by the immensity of the sky, is to be at one with an enchanted nature. To live the telluric and climatic intensity of these confines is to learn that the unpredictable is the ordinary of the world. On this land of petrified lava, the people of the drakkars have forged their identity in a geography of chaos. The sagas - medieval stories steeped in Viking mythology - tell of many fates powerfully linked to this magma land. Olivier Joly has been travelling through Iceland for ten years to capture its landscapes and faces. With this exceptional collection, which even includes photographs and personal texts, testimonies of his attachment to this extraordinary island, he shows us a magnified Iceland in black and white. Authentic mirror of a country or dreamlike vision, it is up to the viewer to imagine his own history. Iceland is a territory that awakens all the senses, that exalts the body and the mind, that plunges the traveler into an imaginary world, built between stories of ancient times and preserved and powerful nature, where men have learned to remain humble and withdrawn. There, on this island at the end of the world at the edge of the Arctic Circle, time is not the same as elsewhere, nor are the sensations one experiences. This tribute book is an invitation to travel and to contemplate, to meet this unique Icelandic soul that emerges on every page, shaped for centuries by isolation and the force of the elements.
