"Snjór" means in Icelandic «snjór». This is the name of a photo series by Christophe Jacrot, which captures the winter landscapes of this northern country during and after snowfall.
Christophe Jacrot (Christophe Jacrot) is a French photographer who works primarily in major cities during bad weather.
Jacrot had been interested in photography since childhood, but he began his career as a film director. Until 1999 he made films, predominantly short films, some of which won awards. After completing his first feature-length film in 1999, Jacrot turned to photography.
Chance threw down a challenge, and through that experience I developed a special relationship with 'bad' weather — an almost symbiotic love affair that led me to create a poetic visual world built on shifting atmospheric conditions
It was chance that made him fall in love with bad weather. For several days he had been unsuccessfully trying to fulfil a commission to photograph a sun-drenched Paris. In desperation, Christophe decided to look at the rain-soaked city differently, and discovered a beauty that a passerby hurrying to find shelter from the downpour rarely has time to notice. "Chance threw down a challenge, and through that experience I developed a special relationship with 'bad' weather — an almost symbiotic love affair that led me to create a poetic visual world built on shifting atmospheric conditions," says Jacrot. He later published a book of photographs of Paris in the rain.
From that moment, his love of bad weather took hold, and he became a true hunter of rain. Jacrot began photographing other cities and countries: New York, Chicago, Hong Kong, Macau, India. In 2012 the photographer was in New York during Hurricane Sandy, capturing the beauty of a city plunged into darkness. But Hong Kong became his favourite destination, largely thanks to its prolonged rainy seasons. He has recently been shooting in Russia as well, and those photographs can be seen on his Instagram. The photographer can also be found on Facebook and Flickr.
Having completed several series of photographs of rain-soaked cities, Jacrot wanted to capture snowfall — but the European climate of recent years had not allowed him to realise the idea. He therefore set off for Iceland, which proved to be a true treasure trove for this kind of photography.
Vast, pristine white plains stretch before the eye, blanketed in untouched snow. Here and there, a rare solitary structure breaks the whiteness. During snowfall, the ocean in the dim twilight seems to extend into eternity. All of the photographer's images carry a melancholy cosiness, as snow softly covers the bare and empty land. The Snjór series has been collected into a book, which can be ordered from Christophe Jacrot's website with delivery anywhere in the world.
We recently wrote about Iceland as seen through the lens of photographer Brendan Lynch, who captured the desolate mountains of Kerlingarfjöll. Another series of photographs of the snow-covered northern country has appeared on our pages, this time in images by Rick Stapleton.
