Afternoon Press Photography in Iceland: 1960-2000

Reykjavík Museum of Photography

Many of us no doubt recall images of long-haired people carrying placards with such slogans as "Iceland out of NATO – Military Out" and "Shit on the System", or pictures of the Danish naval officers who brought home priceless Icelandic manuscripts which had been in Danish collections for centuries. Or the photos of sunken Icelandic whaling vessels lying at the dock in November 1986 after a surprise visit from anti-whaling activists. And most Icelandic adults will remember the summit meeting between Reagan and Gorbachov that year, and the day in 1989 when beer was legalised in Iceland. 

Those photos and about 150 more images of Icelandic life are included in the exhibition **Afternoon Press Photography in Iceland: 1960-2000**. Each image shows a facet of the society from which it springs, and they tell us stories of people, stories of a nation – Iceland. 

Press photography is “journalism using a tool other than the pen,” says Gunnar V. Andrésson, a 40-year veteran of press photography, referring to the alert eye of the press photographer, always seeking to capture the newsworthy moment, “to tell a narrative, primarily for today.” And the results are seen on newspaper pages, a sort of dialogue between the present and itself. 

The photographer’s constant quest for narrative has an interesting side effect; for as the day-to-day images are collected together, day and by day and year by year, they come to constitute a wealth of documentation about society. The exhibition **Afternoon Press Photography in Iceland: 1960-2000** is thus indirectly the fruit of the constant search for a narrative: all the photos are from the photo archive of media group 365 miðlar, which was placed in the keeping of the Reykjavík Museum of Photography in the summer of 2006. The archive, one of the largest privately-owned photographic archives in Iceland, includes photos and  negatives from afternoon newspapers Vísir (1961-81), Dagblaðið (1975-81) and DV (1981-2002). The archive also contains copies of those newspapers from the same period, and negatives from the first year of publication of free newspaper Fréttablaðið (2001-2).

Af­ter­noon Press Pho­to­graphy in Iceland: 1960-2000

It is interesting to consider what Icelandic press photographs come to mind when we recall our recent past.

Afternoon Press Photography in Iceland: 1960-2000