Black Sand
Northline Editions · Landscape · 2025 · Frames 9
Three winters on the south and east coasts of Iceland, where the beaches are black and the light changes every ten minutes. The series became my first book.
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Fr. 01 East coast, 23:40 in June -
Fr. 02 South coast, a February morning -
Fr. 03 East coast, first sun in March -
Fr. 04 From the cliff edge, low tide -
Fr. 05 Glacial river, late summer -
Fr. 06 Glacier tongue, from a small plane -
Fr. 07 Ice lagoon before the rain -
Fr. 08 West peninsula, October -
Fr. 09 The eruption, night two
I first went to Iceland for one week in 2018. I kept going back, and the last three winters became this series.
The first trip was a commission for a travel magazine. I came home with nothing I liked. The beaches were too big and too dark, and my pictures made them look small. In February 2023 I went back without a brief and rented a room on a farm under the mountains.
The series is about one stretch of coast, about two hundred kilometers long. I learned the tides and the bus times, and I learned which beach takes the last light in winter. Most of the frames were made in the twenty minutes after sunset, when the black sand is still wet and holds the color of the sky.
In 2025 the series became my first book, published by Northline Editions. It has forty-two plates. Every photograph on this page is also sold as a fine art print. Write to me for any that are not in the shop.
Black Sand, in eight colors
Sampled from the prints-
Wet black sand
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Surf
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Glacial silt
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Sea fog
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Glacier blue
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Midnight dusk
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October grass
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Lava
One color per print, picked from the finished file.
“Halvorsen photographs the coast the way a tide table describes it: patiently, and with no wasted words.”
- Camera
- Medium format digital, 100 MP
- Lenses
- 32 mm, 64 mm, 110 mm
- Place
- South and east coasts, Iceland
- Made
- Three winters, 2023 to 2025
- Print sizes
- 30 × 40, 50 × 70, 70 × 100 cm
- Paper
- Cotton rag, 310 gsm, matte
- Edition
- 15 of each size
- Book
- Northline Editions, 2025