Ragnar Axelsson, also known as RAX, is an Icelandic photographer. He has been a staff photographer of Morgunblaðið since 1976. Ragnar has done work and stories for various agencies and magazines, shooting in Iceland, the Faroes, Greenland, Indonesia, Scandinavia, and Siberia.
Biography
Ragnar has been traveling to the Arctic for almost three decades. His images have won him recognition as a documentary photographer. He has had photographs and picture essays published in Life, National Geographic Magazine, Le Figaro, Stern, La Vanguardia, Time, and elsewhere. Ragnar's book Andlit Norðursins is a collection of his black-and-white photographs of vanishing ways of life in Iceland, the Faroes and Greenland taken over a period of fifteen years. His most recent book, Last Days of the Arctic, has won critical acclaim, with multiple photo features in the New YorkTimes and exhibitions most recently in Iceland and Ireland. As a photography "Book of the Year", the Times described his work as 'remarkable', 'beautiful', and 'a gift for the eyes, mind and heart'. This body of work presents a unique record of daily life and culture of some of the most remote communities in the world, and the twilight of their society. In 2011, Ragnar wrote an introduction to Iceland, a journal of nocturnes, a photographic monograph by Scottish photographer Bruce Percy.
Reykjavik. Reykjavík: Hagall, c 1991.. A book in color.
Faces and figures: Contemporary Scandinavian photography. New York: American Scandinavian Foundation, 2001. Catalogue of an exhibition held at Scandinavia House, The Nordic Center in America, Apríl-July 2001, and elsewhere.
Ólafsson, Guðmundur Páll. Um víðerni Snæfells. Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 2003.. This book, whose title is translatable as "Through the vastness near Snæfell", documents an area going underwater because of the Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant, and has photographs by Ragnar and also Friðþjófur Helgason and Jóhann Ísberg.
Andlit Norðursins: Ísland, Færeyjar, Grænland. Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 2004.. Various translations have also appeared:
*Faces of the North: Iceland, Faroe Islands, Greenland. Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 2005..
*Visages du Nord: Islande, Féroé, Groenland. Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 2005..
*Die Seele des Nordens. Island, Färöer, Grönland. Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 2005.,.
Veiðimenn norðursins. Photographs by Ragnar Axelsson, text by Mark Nuttall. Reykjavík: Crymogea, 2010..
Last Days of the Arctic. Photographs by Ragnar Axelsson, text by Mark Nuttall. London: Polarworld, 2010; Reykjavík: Crymogea, 2010.. English-language version of Veiðimenn norðursins.
Glacier Photographs by Ragnar Axelsson, text by Ragnar Axelsson. Foreword by artist Olafur Eliasson. Reykjavík: Qerndu, 2018. English-language version of Jökull
Awards
The annual Icelandic Photojournalists Awards: More than twenty awards, including Photographer of the Year and Documentary Story of the Year
