Jón Helgi Pálmason
Photography BA
Royal Academy Of Art The Hague KABK
Specialisms: Photography / Printmaking /
Location: Den Haag, Netherlands
Jón Helgi Pálmason
First Name: Jón Helgi
Last Name: Pálmason
Specialisms: Photography / Printmaking
Sectors:
My Location: Den Haag, Netherlands
University / College: Royal Academy Of Art The Hague KABK
Course / Program Title: Photography BA
About
Jón Helgi Pálmason is an Icelandic photographer whose work is influenced by a personal connection to people, landscapes, and communities. His work is a visual search for traces where the themes of time are central to his working methods. Through his work, he examines the intricate relationship between people and landscape.
Merging documentary observation with a keen sensitivity toward his subjects, he deliberately blurs the line between fact and fiction. Drawing inspiration from local folklore and stories of the past through research, he uses these narratives as both a creative framework to better understand, navigate, and engage with the individuals, communities and the landscapes he documents.
Pálmason’s work focuses on investigating local narratives and the distinct circumstances that shape specific places and their communities. By integrating archival materials and alternative printing techniques with his photographic observations, he often looks to the past to gain a deeper understanding of the present. This layered approach allows him to connect more deeply with a landscape’s history, character, and community.
At an unknown point in history, a great plague is said to have wiped out the entire population of Melrakkaslétta, leaving only two survivors: a man in the eastern part of the region and a woman in the west. As they journeyed through the landscape, moving from farm to farm in search of others, their paths eventually crossed in the middle of Melrakkaslétta, now known as Meyjarþúfa (“Virgin’s knoll”). There, it is said that a new generation was born. Yzta Annesið (The Farthest North) is the culmination of a five-year photographic exploration of Melrakkaslétta, the northernmost region of Iceland, at the edge of the Arctic Circle. Rooted in personal heritage and a longing to reconnect, the work spans two interconnected series: one focused on the village of Raufarhöfn, the birthplace of the photographer’s mother and a community shaped by the rise and fall of the Herring Years in the 1950s and ’60s; the other on the surrounding countryside of Melrakkaslétta, where the vast and unyielding landscape becomes both subject and mirror of the photographer’s connection to the region. Through photography, archival material, and found objects, the work reflects on how inherited memory and the natural environment coalesce to shape identity. It asks how landscapes hold stories, how they inform who we are, and what remains when a place continues without us. In an era of rapid environmental and societal change, the project – part social document, part personal journey – gently examines the fragile equilibrium between survival and loss, and the connection between landscape, history, and home.
Competitions
