Norlandia

The little town of Ólafsfjörður sits at the mouth of the Eyjafjörður, one of the longest fjords in Iceland. A considerable number of its eight hundred or so inhabitants work for Norlandia, a fishing and fish-drying company which supplies cod, hake, haddock and pollack to both the local and foreign markets.

Ólafsfjörður’s small trawler fleet is the principal source of sustenance of the human occupants of the region and to a great extent determines their living conditions. The ruggedness of the landscape finds some equivalence in the people and in the context of their daily activity. During the month of July, the sun never sets on Ólafsfjörður, and the relationship between light and darkness is one of the main sources of the area’s exuberant mythology.

As part of the Listhús artist’s residency he was awarded in 2014, Juan Baraja explored a way of life profoundly conditioned by the biotope and by a light that is almost porous. Fruit of his stay on the fjord, alongside the project Experimento Banana, is the photographic series entitled Norlandia, in which the photographer for the first time moved away from the specific focus on architecture that had marked his work up until then to immerse himself in the portrait.

Alfredo Puente, FCAYC