Our role as photographers is to capture a world that others can’t see, and in this process we leave a little bit of us in every photo that we take. In a way, every single one of our photographs is also a portrait of ourselves.
In this series, A World That Others Can’t See, I ask fellow photographers to talk about an image from their portfolios in order to discover the stories behind their work and to learn about the person behind the lens.
For the eighth post of the series, documentary and portrait photographer Gabrielle Motola talks about her work in Iceland, where she produced her first book entitled An Equal Difference (2016), in which she explores the modern search for gender equality and shared humanity.
Gabrielle says: “I travelled to Iceland in 2013 and over the course of three years, photographed and interviewed one hundred residents from many walks of society. Politicians, educators, artists, scientists, people of different gender identities and lifestyles. About two and a half years in, I decided to consolidate my efforts into a book.
"A collection of essays, portraits and landscapes exploring the Icelandic mindset, An Equal Difference was published in 2016. It is inspired by our modern search for gender equality and shared humanity. It analyses Icelandic society, but it seeks to understand how we all could build more equal and benevolent societies that encourage us to be healthier in ourselves and towards each other.
"I was inspired by Iceland’s reaction to the financial crash of 2008 and wanted to understand more about a culture which sought to examine the over-masculinised behaviour that led to the crash, without blaming men. After all, women were involved in the crash too.
"Afterwards, Iceland called for measures like the feminisation of banking, Those responsible for the economic crash went to jail, and an openly lesbian prime minister was elected to lead a parliament that was 52% female. This parliament then proceeded to make prostitution illegal – by criminalising the buyers, not the sellers.
"Sounds ideal, right? But rather than project my utopian fantasies and idealise the country, I sought instead to get under the skin of Iceland through my network. I worked with locals to connect to, photograph and have conversations with what turned out to be a “who’s who” of Icelanders.
"My criteria for subjects was esoteric. I wanted people who could think for themselves. We tend to call it thinking differently, but in a monocultural country of 330,000 there isn’t that much room for difference. What I found in Iceland were humans. And human problems. No country is perfect. No system. Perfection exists only in the mind, and it is our pursuit of it that is most human of all.
"Idealism aside, I wanted to know about the kind of society Iceland had cultivated. Why was it topping gender equality charts year after year? Why did it have one of the Greenest energy programs on the planet? Was it because of gender equality that these models co-existed? What makes gender equality work on a practical level, and did it really exist in Iceland in a way that the people benefitted from it? More importantly, how might equality influence the way individuals think and operate in society and ultimately construct it?
"How did women and men see each other – and themselves? What was their character like, compared to other countries I had lived in? Were women more confident, men more open-minded, children better cared for? Was life there more balanced?
"We are all much bigger than our cultures, yet our personalities take the shapes of them to some extent. I did not find absolute equality, however, I did find a high concentration of evolved ideas and perspectives.
"The two images you see here are of two totally different kinds of imperfection, striving for perfection.
"Ólöf Arnalds is a singer/songwriter and indie musician. She is classically educated on the violin, viola and self-taught on guitar and charango, but it is her voice which makes her music stand out. Her distinctness may be thanks to the fact that she is a self-confessed weirdo. I had this even confirmed by a childhood classmate whom I also photographed who could never understand why she asked the complicated questions she did in bible studies. Ólöf was in her back yard in Reykjavik when I met her, explaining her eyes and how they do not perfectly point in the same direction. Neither do mine.
"Héðinn is a senior government policy analyst advising on mental health. He has the hard-won advantage of first-hand experience of the Icelandic mental health system, about which he wrote a book entitled Vertu Ulfur (Be a Wolf). He would not use the term bipolar to describe himself. He uses cold-water therapy to work on his mind. I trained for three weeks in Iceland’s cold pools to get up the stamina and courage to step into this near-frozen lake near Borgarnes in late November. It was 2 degrees centigrade.
"I still swim and shower in cold water and enjoy its many benefits. Whenever I am told I am weird – which is not an infrequent occurrence – I think of Ólöf."
I couldn't be happier and more inspired, Gabrielle! I have no words to express how grateful I am that you shared the beautiful stories behind your images with me.
You can learn more about Gabrielle's work at www.gabriellemotola.com and if you want to purchase a copy of her beautiful book, you can visit https://www.anequaldifference.com/
Gabrielle is also on Patreon and her Instagram and Twitter handles are @gmotophotos
For more information about Ólöf and Héðinn:
Ólöf Arnalds www.olofarnalds.com Héðinn Unnsteinsson www.hedinn.org
If you haven’t read the previous posts of this series, you can check the whole series here. I hope you liked this new post and stay tuned for a different photographer each month!
Photo credit: portrait by Sean Tucker
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