Around the year 2000, I discovered Iceland and immediately fell in love with the country.
On my first visit, I took this photograph, which has long been a favorite of mine.
Shortly after the trip, my film camera was stolen and I switched to digital, making this image the last print I made from chemical photo process.
The image depicts someplace special to me, but also has an ambiguity I enjoy. What’s the scale? Are those mountains? Boulders? Why is the water opaque? What is the whiteness near the waterline in the foreground?
To me, this isn’t just a landscape photograph. It’s a memory of a place that’s special to me, partly because I feel it succeeds in depicting the otherworldly nature.
When I framed the photo, I also wanted to commemorate its uniqueness as my final film image. There would never be another print. So I cut the film negative, and mounted it on the back of the frame as proof.
Why this urge?
I don’t know.
It is a Non-Fungible Token.
The NFT craze didn’t begin in 2021.
Spoilers: The scene is a small runoff near the entrance to the famous geothermal hot springs at the Blue Lagoon. The width is around 6 feet (2 meters), and I doubt the channel was more than a foot deep. The water is white for the same reason the rocks have mineral buildup on the sides.
Nice to see that image again