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Daniel Bergmann
Daníel Bergmann is an Icelandic photographer who believes there are still images to be made in Iceland, even though it’s been visited by just about everyone in the world that owns a camera. It’s not about location he tells himself while searching for the perfect not yet photographed location, fully aware of the contradiction therein. Daníel read somewhere that landscape photographers create their best work in their fifties, so he’s rushing towards that decade in his life whilst practising on the way.
Michéla Griffith
In 2012 I paused by my local river and everything changed. I’ve moved away from what many expect photographs to be: my images deconstruct the literal and reimagine the subjective, reflecting the curiosity that water has inspired in my practice. Water has been my conduit: it has sharpened my vision, given me permission to experiment and continues to introduce me to new ways of seeing.
You can’t beat local knowledge and insight, and we’re delighted in this issue to have as our featured photographer Iceland’s Daníel Bergmann, who is also one of the speakers for our postponed ‘A Meeting of Minds’ landscape photography conference on 5-7 November 2021 at the Rheged Centre in Cumbria. We have a selection of images from Daníel that show that there is much more to his homeland than the icons that dominate social media.
Can you tell readers a little about yourself – your education, early interests and career – and the places in which you grew up and now live? How and when did you first become interested in photography? What kind of images did you first set out to make and how did it become a career?
I grew up in Reykjavik. From when I was ten years old, we lived at the edge of the city and there was vast moorland right outside our house leading to distant hills and mountains. I got my first camera when I was a teenager and one of the things I found exciting to photograph were the moorlands birds, such as the Golden Plover, Whimbrel and Snipe, which were all breeding around the house. I set up a darkroom in the basement and from the moment I developed my first film I knew that photography would be my path in life.
Right out of college, where I studied journalism, I started working in photography. In the beginning, I mainly did editorial work for newspapers and magazines but eventually, I took a leap of faith and fully concentrated on nature.