Sagas

Photographer Olivier Joly has visited Iceland for over ten years to capture its landscapes and its faces.

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Why criss-cross Iceland in all directions, in all seasons, when the world is so vast?

For the inner exile offered by this walk on the heights. For the first snows that upset the landscape and teleport us into a charcoal painting. For the spring which will bring back with the birds a forgotten sweetness. For the summer with days without night. For the rare men and women I have been lucky enough to meet. For the infinite range of emotions aroused by these boreal steppes. For the space, the freedom, the omnipresence of natural forces, which help to breathe deeper.

To find the oldest living All Black in a hospice in Auckland, to share a vintage wine with Jim Harrison in his house in Montana, to draw the portrait of penguins in Antarctica, to cross the rivers of Iceland on foot…

Photographer, journalist, author and speaker, Olivier Joly has always let his steps guide him towards emotions and encounters. Surveyor of large geographical spaces and human intimacy, he saw over time his intimate compass pointing to the cold and windy ends of the world. This is how he found his promised land. Twenty trips and a year on the spot have made him one of Iceland's most knowledgeable connoisseurs. After the success of his book Four Seasons in Iceland, he now looks at it in black and white.