Behind Mountains

Untamed Beauty: Iceland from the perspective of the award-winning photographer

For forty-five years, the Icelandic photographer Ragnar Axelsson has observed the farmers of his homeland during the sheep roundups. This centuries-old tradition takes place every autumn and is often carried out on horseback or on foot. In his third publication with Kehrer Verlag, Axelsson presents powerful, atmospheric black- and-white photographs that impressively document the interaction between people and their animals, as well as with the rugged landscape. Majestic rolling hills, besieged by roaring snow and rainstorms, rough lava rock, and massive rock formations convey a realistic and compelling image of the extraordinary connection between humans and nature. Axelsson’s work has been honored with numerous awards, including the Prix Pictet shortlist and the Leica Oskar Barnack Award (Honorable Mention).

Ragnar Axelsson, also known as Rax, (b. 1958, Iceland), has been photographing the people, animals, and landscape of the most remote regions of the Arctic, including Iceland, Siberia, and Greenland. In stark black-and-white images, he captures the elemental, human experience of nature at the edge of the liveable world, making visible the extraordinary relationships between the people of the Arctic and their extreme environment – relationships now being altered in profound and complex ways by the unprecedented changes in climate. He was a photojournalist at Morgunbladid, the leading Icelandic newspaper, (1976–2020), and has worked on freelance assignments in Latvia, Lithuania, Mozambique, South Africa, China and Ukraine. His photographs have been featured in LIFE, Newsweek, Stern, GEO, National Geographic, Time, and Polka, and have been exhibited widely.