Parma ham, salami, red wine, laughter, jalapeno, bread, crying, pesto, mozzarella, chatter, Pellegrino, pasta, olives, demand, attention, happiness, discussion, dog, tiredness, chaos, and finally a child that gets up and runs away.

Dream, nightmare, narrative or reality. Katrín Elvarsdóttir’s photographs from a family dinner, on a hilly landscape (that appears as by change in one of the photographs), present all this to us at once. A family gathering that is ordinary but at the same time seems somewhat alarming. The photographs are a representation of the longing that every one of us carries within about a perfect world, a perfect moment, one that slips between our fingers when we least expect it and our life’s elaborate exterior stands like an empty shell unable to support the life within the circle. The dinner party contained within the circle that the photographs form is full of chaos and unexpected moments. The children create tension at the table, they shout out loud, demand more, not those greens, take a dance step between courses, spill and run away unexpectedly. The adults persist in carrying on with the conversation and enjoying their food. Keeping up the spirit and reminding themselves of the structure that creates a frame around chaos itself.

The photographs confirm what once took place. They also remove the moments from their original context and create a new narrative. With her photographs Katrin Elvarsdóttir creates a narrative based on moments in the life of her family. This is not the story of her family, however. These are not their memories, not their evening. They are only contributors to the story that the photographs bring us. We have to be content with that. We cannot penetrate inside the circle, into their minds and feelings – we don’t know locations, facts, names, dates. We are outside the circle. The narrative that the photographs present to us are fragmented, like in a dream or a memory that we don’t recognize but know that we partake in. It is in our hands to form a complete picture from this—or to let it be and allow the photographs to form a fragmented whole, a circle that doesn’t close.

Circular forms lead us from circular plates, bread baskets, sausages and tattoos into a world seen through other circular forms – a hole in a wall and a half-open window. Katrin’s photographs of landscape that appears through window panes and wall openings emphasize further the emotions that her images awaken, whether in dream, fiction or in reality itself. Our viewpoint is always limited and fragmented. Every day we try to give our life and memories a complete picture. Create a framework, a circle that we incessantly persist in closing even tough we know that if we succeed we can’t let anything else inside. That’s how it ends.

Parmaskinka, salami, rauðvín, hlátur, jalapeño, brauð, grátur, pestó, mozzarella, skvaldur, pellegrino, pasta, ólívur, heimtufrekja, athygli, hamingja, samræða, hundur, þreyta, ringulreið og að lokum barn sem stendur á fætur og hleypur burt.

Draumur, martröð, frásögn eða veruleiki. Ljósmyndir Katrínar Elvarsdóttur af fjölskyldukvöldverði í hæðóttu landslagi (sem birtist eins og fyrir tilviljun á einni myndinni) birta okkur þetta allt í senn. Fjölskylduboð sem er í senn hversdagslegt en um leið örlítið ógnvekjandi. Ljósmyndirnar eru eins konar birtingarmynd þeirrar þrár sem hver maður ber með sér um fullkominn heim, fullkomið augnablik, sem smýgur burt úr greipum okkar þegar minnst varir og úthugsuð umgjörðin um líf okkar stendur eftir eins og illa gerður hlutur sem hefur enga burði til að móta það líf sem er innan hringsins. Borðhaldið sem á sér stað innan þess hrings sem ljósmyndin skapar umgjörð um er uppfullt af ringulreið og óvæntum augnablikum. Börnin skapa spennu við borðið, þau hrópa upp yfir sig, heimta meira að drekka, vilja ekki svona grænt, taka dansspor milli rétta, hella niður og hlaupa burt þegar minnst varir. Þeir fullorðnu þrjóskast við að halda uppi samræðum og njóta matarins. Halda sínu striki og minna sig á þá umgjörð sem skapar ramma utan um sjálfa ringulreiðina.

Ljósmyndirnar staðfesta það sem eitt sinn átti sér stað. Þær rífa augnablikið jafnframt úr samhengi og skapa þannig nýja frásögn. Með ljósmyndum sínum skapar Katrín Elvarsdóttir frásögn sem hún byggir á raunverulegum augnablikum í lífi fjölskyldu sinnar. Þetta er þó ekki saga fjölskyldu hennar. Þetta eru ekki þeirra minningar, ekki þeirra kvöldstund. Þau leggja aðeins til efni í þá sögu sem ljósmyndirnar færa okkur. Við verðum að láta okkur það nægja. Getum ekki þröngvað okkur inn fyrir, inn í hugarheim þeirra og tilfinningar, þekkjum ekki staðhætti, staðreyndir, nöfn og dagsetningar. Við erum utan hringsins. Sú frásögn sem ljósmyndirnar birta okkur er brotakennd, líkt og í draumi eða minningu sem við könnumst ekki almennilega við en vitum að við eigum hlutdeild í. Það er í okkar valdi að skapa úr þessu heildstæða mynd – eða láta það vera og leyfa ljósmyndunum að mynda brotakennda heild, hring sem ekki lokast.

Hringlaga form leiða okkur frá hringlaga diskum, brauðkörfum, pylsum og húðflúri yfir í veröld sem við virðum fyrir okkur í gegnum önnur hringlaga form, gat í vegg og hálfopinn glugga. Ljósmyndir Katrínar af landslagi sem birtist okkur í gegnum gluggarúður og gluggaop undirstrika enn frekar þá tilfinningu sem ljósmyndir hennar vekja, að heimurinn birtist okkur ætíð á brotakenndan og afmarkaðan hátt, hvort heldur í draumi, skáldskap eða í veruleikanum sjálfum. Sjónarhorn okkar er ætíð takmarkað og brotakennt. Alla daga leitumst við þó við að gefa lífi okkar og minningum heildsteypta mynd. Skapa umgjörð, hring sem við þrjóskumst í sífellu við að loka jafnvel þó að við vitum að ef það tekst getum við ekki hleypt neinu öðru inn. Þannig endar þetta.

Sigrún Sigurðardóttir

Reykjavík

May 2007

Reykjavik, Sept. 2013

To be an Icelander is perhaps in sum an endless wait. To wait for spring, wait for summer. Eternal optimism despite frozen ground and mounds of ice that seem rooted deep in the bowels of the earth, so firmly that the thought of living things in the ice-capped farmyard seems far-fetched, a daydream of the romantic sort, a flight of fancy.

For those who wait pining with summer-thirst, who hoping against hope scan land and sea for early signs of life in blasted fields and quiet woods, in silenced summer, who seek evidence of life, of a summer that seems determined not to come – when summer does come it comes so softly that it almost slips past, like a fragrance of summer in the offing, gone in the time it takes to pluck and chew a blade of grass, distractedly, in the dwindling hope of one who seeks and waits upon silent signs of warmth and life.

Summer’s arrival, instantly gone.

Yet its traces are perceptible. Shifts in earthen colours, the changing light; all that will go dormant again, fade and die. Seasonal dwellings: humanity itself is evidence.

We carry the vanished summer inside us and summon its images, late-summer sun striking a new-mown field, ruddy steam curling from a stream at the edge of the woods.

Life’s summers, vanished like everything else that never amounted to more than a promise. And again we drink in autumn’s arrival.

The land lies quiet and poignant.

The first time I set foot in Katrín Elvarsdóttir’s studio, three years ago, I felt as if I were stepping into a literary work. Her works tell a story and yet the story remains untold. It’s like stepping into a narrative, into surroundings that are foreign and yet familiar, perhaps because of how very familiar the subject matter of Elvarsdóttir’s photographs is.

An Icelandic mobile home in an unspecified locale in a grove of trees so nameless that you feel as if you were last there yesterday, however unlikely that might be.

A grove, the side of a house, a livingroom window, tidy carpeting neatly fitted to teak corner trim.

Fragments of reality. Traces of life, of habitation long or brief. Life at a remove, almost like a stage set yet not quite.

Plant-filled windows so quintessentially Icelandic, they’d be unmistakeable anywhere.

From up west in Bíldudalur? I ask. No, up west in Flateyri, says Katrín Elvarsdóttir, and we smile – of course. But I always think of Bíldudalur when I look at that photograph.

Stories that remain untold, that you inwardly compose as you look at Elvarsdóttir’s work.

That autumn day when I first visited her studio I felt as if I were re-experiencing these photographs though I was seeing many of them for the first time.

It felt just like stepping into the writings of Gyrðir Elíasson.

A half-told story, ending at the full stop but leaving you hanging, with questions on your lips and the uneasy sense that something has been left unsaid and lurks below to creep up on you, like the sneaking suspicion that things are not as they seem. Better shut the lid on all those uneasy chilly thoughts, and not let your imagination run away with you. Something might be hiding around the corner, behind the door.

We stand and ponder these windows with their potted plants and lace curtains that block the view, but maybe we are the ones being scrutinized, from beyond the houseplants and sheer curtains.

The Katrín Elvarsdóttir photographs presented here were not made as accompaniments to Gyrðir Elíasson’s work; rather the spirit of his work has been a companion to Katrín Elvarsdóttir in her travels around the countryside, like a feast moveable in space as well as time.

Harpa Árnadóttir

Reykjavík, 2015

The photographs in this book were made in Beijing and Pingyao over a period of four years on three separate trips, the longest lasting a month. When, in 2010, my husband and I went to China for the first time to adopt our daughter Elva Qi, I was intrigued by the textures and colors of this peculiar country.

Being occupied by various other concerns at the time, I didn’t plan to produce a book of photographs taken in China. Two years later in blazing heat my then 4-year old daughter was walking with me through the hutongs of Beijing. She pointed at a pile of bricks and said, “Mom, look! Don’t you want to photograph this?!” And she was right – I did want to photograph it. And a whole lot more. This book encapsulates my experience and view of this unfamiliar environment, one that became increasingly familiar with every visit and ultimately convinced me to put together the book Double Happiness.

I want to thank my family for their support and encouragement.

Katrín Elvarsdóttir