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Augnablik — BA Graduation Project — 2021
Overview
Augnablik, or "Moment", was my BA graduation project at the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2021. The work was later sold at Epal, one of Iceland’s oldest and renowned design stores.
The name stems from an attempt to capture and neutralise the ever-changing character of nature. The forces of nature constantly reshape our earth – what we see today may be gone tomorrow. In this project, I sought to preserve and capture moments of natural beauty in both time and space, savouring their magic.
I examined various forms in nature, often enlarging the small and overlooked, and found myself mesmerised by fascinating patterns and colors that appear only for a moment. According to the Icelandic dictionary, "Augnablik" is defined as a brief instant or the period it takes to blink an eye. You can relate this definition to photography, where the camera catches a moment in time by swiftly opening and closing its lens.
Photography has always been a part of my life. Ever since I was little, I’ve carried a camera. It has always been a big part of how I perceive the environment – how I see it in a photograph. I’ve also kept a diary for as long as I can remember, and have long wanted to include something related to writing in my work. So I thought that now was the perfect time to do that, as my work was a kind of study of nature.
The photographs were taken across different times and places in my life. I’ve always been drawn to abstraction and began removing colours from the images, identifying when and where they were taken, and reconnecting with the moments behind them.
Alongside the book and this colour study, I created a series of posters based on the extracted palettes from a moment. After doing the preparatory work and making a palette out of the images, it was rewarding to see how the work could evolve into something new.