An old jalopy drives along a dark road. Fingers drumming on the dashboard. Rain flowing down the windows. The headlights show: asphalt with potholes, ruffled withered grass, landscape shadows. You point to the cracks in the mountain and the car reacts. Following this direction onto the bumpy gravel road, you slip under the chain and halt inside the wound. We step outside, hear the whispering in the mines. Listen to the stones seeping down the walls. You point again. Point to the darkness in the sky and the whole area reacts. The whispering intensifies, transforms into deep rumbling, and from the razor-sharp escarpments on the mountain, we hear singing. Before we run, you snap a photo. The flash travels up the slopes. The pillars. The rocks. Upwards, upwards. It is lost in the night.
On our way home we see the vague outlines of white haybales in the greyish grass. Hear the echo of hooves; once upon a time they cut up these deserted fields. We drive along the ditches surrounding the village. I remember a wound covered by a plaster. Recalling the earth beneath the turf. A ditch. We jumped across a deep ditch. Found entertainment in a lit, dark autumn evening. Jumped across. The wound that our parents’ parents cut through the farm so that the water would run down to the sea. A wound that drove away the birds, dried the moorland and created space for human activity. Across. Again and again. Kept jumping. Again and again. Across. The swamp seeped into the boots. I returned home, standing in two lukewarm ponds. My mother emptied the boots and placed them on the radiator in the laundry room. But the swamp never dried from their soles. Not completely.
We sleep. In our dreams, the wound heals. The creek floods and flows over the streets. Into backyards and driveways, basements and storages, laundry rooms and playgrounds. The houses sink into the ground and our feet get stuck in the pond scum. When we wake up, we feel better. The floor is dry. The radiator warm. We look out the window and calmly watch the wind entangled in the woods. Nevertheless, we know of the road that will flow from beneath the trees. Know about the coming of the men in the mossy green waterproofs. Know about those who will chop the birches down. Next winter, the roots that they leave behind will start squirming in the frost. Find their way towards the village. They will invade the pipes, stick out of kitchen taps, grow up from the gymnasium floor.
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Settlement is a long-term photography project by Pétur Thomsen, where he investigates land use and how humans impact nature. Pétur photographs mines, roads, lava fields, woods, creeks and cultivated land in the darkness, using a flash to define the subject. Thus, the photos become a testament to man’s transformation of nature, which has in the last centuries been so extensive that many believe that mankind has brought about a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene: a period that is marked by climate change and global warming, among other phenomena.
Geological epochs are punctuated with mass extinction events where the majority of all species goes extinct. It is believed that the Anthropocene will bring lead to the sixth extinction event, which is traced back to human activities; to overpopulation, megacities, enormous use of fossil fuels and land use, to name but a few things.
The Anthropocene and the ongoing sixth mass extinction event are the subject of the exhibition Settlement in Hafnarborg. The exhibition contains new works by Pétur, reflecting on these turbulent times. According to Pétur, the series is also inspired by the words of his teacher, photographer Arnaud Claas, who in class used to repeat the following phrase: “We know how this ends. The Sun will swallow the Earth in the end.” By that, he wanted to remind his students of the inescapable fact that humanity will eventually be trounced by nature.
Pétur Thomsen (b. 1973) finished an MFA in photography from École nationale supérieure de la photographie in Arles, France, in 2004. Before that, he studied French, art history and archeaology at Université Paul Valéry in Montpellier and art photography at École supérieure des métiers artistiques in the same city. Pétur has received various awards and recognitions, including, for example, the LVMH Corporation prize in 2004, awarded to a young artist for the 10th time. He was also selected by the Musée de L’Élysée in Lausanne as one of the 50 photographers likely to make waves in future photography history, in the project reGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow. Pétur lives and works at Sólheimar in Grímsnes.
Text: Tómas Ævar Ólafsson
Translation: Ingunn Snædal