In TSJ 27.3, author and Boat magazine editor Erin Spens profiles Icelandic surf photographer Elli Thor Magnusson and his body of work.
“After collaborating with him for several years,” she writes, “I am still amazed by the depth and quality of the images he’s able to capture. Because he comes from the land and the cultures he documents, he absorbs the environment and the atmosphere, mixes it with his own history and knowledge of a place, and then somehow filters everything into his images. The stories his photos tell are rich in detail and thick with feeling—the white-knuckle fear of driving through bad weather on snow-drifted roads, the learned patience of Icelandic surfers who can read volatile conditions for the right signals, the elated high of coming in after a good session, the carefree middle-of-the-night-hot-tub-with-friends-got-nowhere-to-be-tomorrow aftermath.”
In print, we devote 20 high-gloss pages to showcasing Magnusson’s images of his native Iceland, plus other snow-choked fjords. Pick up a copy of the mag for more. In the meanwhile, above, Magnusson offers a sample of his eye behind a motion camera (in this case an iPhone), documenting another arctic surf-scape in the Faroe Islands.
