Iceland Wintertide

About

About the Author
David Freese has spent the last sixteen years photographing North America’s major waters, resulting in a trilogy of books: West Coast: Bering to Baja (2012), East Coast: Arctic to Tropic (2016), and Mississippi River: Headwaters and Heartland to Delta and Gulf (2020), all published by George F. Thompson Publishing. His prints are in numerous collections, including the Center for Creative Photography, Cleveland Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Haggerty Museum of Art, and Library of Congress, and his photographs have appeared in Communication Arts, photo district news, Photo Insider, Polaroid International, Popular Photography, Smithsonian Air and Space, and View Camera magazines. www.davidfreesephoto.net

About the Essayist
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, a native of Reykjavik who studied art history at the Sorbonne in Paris, is a well-known Icelandic novelist, playwright, and poet. Her six novels include Ör (Hotel Silence) (2016; English translation, 2018), which was awarded the Nordic Council Literature Prize, and Ungfrú Ísland (Miss Iceland) (2018).

Slide Show

Praise

“David Freese has traveled the globe considering our planet—its waterways, coastlines, and natural and built environments. His work is revelatory, with an insistence on unique perspectives that examine place. His newest effort, Iceland Wintertide, reflects those same efforts, but this time he captures obscured landscapes covered in snow and ice in heroic geologic and atmospheric vistas. His palette of desaturated winter colors reveal a humbling magnificence, yet Freese reminds us, in the shadow of such remarkable beauty, of the fragility of our earthly environments in the midst of climate change.”
—Aline Smithson, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Lenscratch (read more)

“Iceland Wintertide is a cinematic ode to the vastness of Icelandic land, sea, and skyscapes. The muted tonalities give all the information we need to realize how ephemeral things are—global warming has caused Iceland’s glaciers to lose seven percent of their surface (290 square miles/751 square kilometers) since the turn of the millennium. David Freese’s elegant documentation of this Arctic region gives us the contemplative space to understand the responsibilities we ideally carry. —Laura Moya, Director of Photolucida

“In an intriguing way, David Freese’s color photographs of Iceland’s black-and-white wintertide enclose many dimensions of time. They store the time of the past, which can be associated with the timelessness of nature without man and manifests itself in horizontal layers of volcanic rock, stacked on top of each other, windswept mountains with contrasting personal traits, black lava fields, and tree twigs protruding through the snow. But they also capture the present with fenceposts and power lines, a red roof under a powder-blue sky and a blue tractor, a few trees planted by a farm and a village snuggling under a steep mountain. In Freese’s photographs people are like little black strokes, the size of matches, under an immense sky. They not only remind us that nature is bigger than man, but also that, although man cannot survive without nature, nature can cope perfectly well without man.”
— Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, novelist, poet, and playwright
Translated from Icelandic by Brian FitzGibbon

“Looking at David Freese’s images of Iceland reminds me that the longest season is full of surprises. Like a sea full of blue ice, a red-roofed church in a blizzard, a tiny horse and rider under the heaviest sky, a frozen waterfall, a plowed road cutting through the land, a glimpse of a lake beneath cliffs made soft by snow conjuring up a Georgia O’Keeffe painting of Lake George. I look again and again at the pictures and not only imagine that I am transported to this otherworldly landscape, but can actually hear the muffled sounds and the strange quiet that comes with the weight of winter. The experience of looking at these photographs is enough.”
—Ann Jastrab, Executive Director of the Center for Photographic Art

“David Freese has had a singular focus: documenting North American Waters. His first book was West Coast: Bering to Baja, followed by a look at the opposite side of the country, East Coast: Arctic to Tropic, and finally, his trilogy finds its culmination in the recent Mississippi River: Headwaters and Heartland to Delta and Gulf, which coincidently just won the IPPY Gold Medal 2021 for best Coffee Table Book.
“All three are sumptuously printed, beautifully seen and designed. What is most interesting is that these aren’t simply documents of those places, but with an unerring instinct, the images are complex, classically beautiful, but never treacly. Since the time span for the three volumes covers eight years, these don’t sit as a typical trilogy in terms of book design, size, and binding, but no matter—they are a testament to a singular dedication, coupled with a vision to match. His latest book continues in the same spirit, but travels to the North American Ocean in Iceland Wintertide. David Freese’s books are the perfect exploration of the landscape by a master.”
—Harris Fogel, Mac Edition Radio, https://maceditionradio.com/node/6231

My Place

“On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.” If W. C. Fields could see his city now, he would wholeheartedly agree.

Yes, I love wild places and dramatic coastlines, but I also love cities. So far, I’ve never met one I didn’t like. My wife and I both grew up in Long Island outside New York City. We moved to Philadelphia in 1971 when I had an opportunity to start my photographic career there. Philly’s reputation at that time was, to be kind, not great, but it was easy to see that some very good things were going on, and we found ourselves liking our new home straight away.

During our first week in Philly, a good friend drove us along East River Drive (later renamed Kelly Drive) beside the Schuylkill River toward Center City. We then continued around Eakins Oval in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and proceeded down Benjamin Franklin Parkway toward City Hall. I thought then, and still think now, that this is one of the most beautiful urban drives anywhere in the world.

As fortune would have it, we started our future in Philadelphia just as developers were realizing its potential, the restaurant scene was awakening, and some thoughtful urban planning was starting to pay off. By 1980, even the sports teams were winning. And once the artificial height limit of Billy Penn’s hat at the top of City Hall (548 feet) was broken big-time in 1986 by One Liberty Place (945 feet), a skyscraper building boom began. The skyline changed dramatically and appropriately reflected the changing city on all fronts. Progress was being made. Soon Philadelphia was gaining respect from the national media. Favorable and oftentimes glowing articles were appearing regularly in newspapers and magazines.

The “city of neighborhoods,” as Philadelphia is known, certainly has some major faults, as does any urban area―crime, uneven public education, and budget woes among them. Nevertheless, everything one would want out of a world-class city is here―art, culture, entertainment, history, music, restaurants galore, major sports teams, theater, top universities and colleges, sports, urban parks, a great zoo, effective transportation, reasonably priced housing, fabulous medical care, and continued planning for the future. The good reviews continue.

Sometimes known as America’s most livable city, we plan on staying in Philly―with frequent trips to the West Coast, of course.

Copyright © 2013 David Freese. All rights reserved.