Iceland: Born of Lava, Chiseled by Ice

Iceland has an alien quality that defies expectations. Its interior is lifeless and bare with volcanic formations that are reminiscent of what the earth must have looked like in Archean times. Hot geysers, deep mountainous fjords, and glaciers that carve their way into the lowlands are just some of the features that are compressed into this small island nation. It is just such a compelling and unfamiliar landscape that makes visiting here an ultimate trip.

My focus was not on the iconic hotspots that made Iceland famous but the less visited and undiscovered features that had their own intrinsic values in texture, form and color. With each of my five visits I discovered much more by limiting myself to explore and familiarize myself with a small select unknown area becoming more an opportunistic photographer depending mostly on luck to find something that merited my attention. Whether I was climbing for days in the highlands of the interior, skirting calving glaciers, crossing a moonlike landscape or wandering a weatherbeaten shore, Iceland is a photographer's paradise.

Photographer Arnold Zageris was born in Germany in 1948 to a Latvian father and German mother. At the age of two and a half years, the Zageris family immigrated to Canada and settled in the remote northern mining town of Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. Zageris has won many awards for his work and has exhibited in public and private galleries across Canada including: Art Bank of Canada, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Canadian Museum of Nature, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, Ontario, and The Rooms in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. He is the author of two books: On the Labrador and Antarctica. Zageris now lives with his wife Joan in Peterborough, Ontario.