A Defender in Iceland
Green-blue water tearing at jagged breaths of ice. Impassive clouds in a ceaseless sky. Cracked earth shouldering up, its whites and blacks broken only be question marks of vegetation and a single track that reaches off into the distance. Iceland is an elemental place, a part of the globe where travellers are forever mindful of their environment. The desolate landscape bewitches French photographer Patrick Curtet. After 10 business trips to the Scandinavian island, he pledged to make his eleventh a love letter to the landscape.
The shots on our pages don’t fulfil a contract; they aren’t shot to any greater plan. Two clear weeks, a Land Rover Defender and a local guide gave Patrick the freedom to create images to his own satisfaction. There was no audience and even thoughts of his travel companion vanished as he drew each composition together. ‘Taking pictures is a very intense emotional experience. Though I love to travel with other people, they need to do their own thing when I’m getting shots. It’s something very personal. The process is almost mystical.’
Reaching out over uninhabited landscapes, his photographs grapple with the scale of this wild, volcanic place. ‘I go deeper into Iceland with each visit and every time I’m blown away. There’s something very particular about this huge country with very few people in it – you can feel alone there.’ Patrick used that
space to listen to the world around him. ‘This time I wanted to really think, to see what the country would give to me instead of taking from the landscape.’ He embraced the bright nights of the Arctic summer and sometimes waited hours for the weather to develop, all in search of the perfect images.
‘We have to forget everything we know and get rid of the things we bring to a place as foreigners, so we can awaken our senses and let ourselves discover. That, for me, is the essence of travel.’ Over four decades and 73 different nations, Patrick has learned to reject the familiar and embrace novel experiences across the globe. ‘In the past, people crossed Africa and explored the poles without ever knowing what they would find.
That’s the feeling I want to recreate. I let the country decide where I go, not what other people recommend.’ In Iceland that meant travelling north and sleeping under canvas. ‘Tents might not be comfortable but you feel so much more of what happens in a place when you’re camping. It’s a part of a whole different process.’ A hunger for new perspectives also drove Patrick towards aerial photography. ‘I can’t soar like a bird but my drones let me experience what they can see. When I saw all of this, it made for a totally different trip. Every part of the environment started to take on so much more volume.’ The contrast is striking. Patrick’s ground-level photos are earthy and textural, the aerial images dreamlike.
The third dimension has been integral to telling this story and its personal impact. ‘All the drone shots place the Land Rover very small in the countryside and, for me, these images are the real reflection of Iceland. I felt so small when I was there and the Defender acted like our safe boat in the middle of the ocean. That’s the first response I had to the journey, and one that spanned most of my experience. Nothing else is more important than that feeling, and if you go away from it then you’ve got nothing.’
Patrick takes a different approach to his professional work – planning each shoot in exacting detail – but he still values his creative reactions above all else, helping him create unusually dynamic automotive images. ‘I give myself as much freedom as possible on set. I’ll be creative and impulsive, deviating from my plans, and it’s not a problem because it’s a choice.’ The results range from hair flowing across a SEAT hatchback to a Lexus SUV hiding in a forest. ‘There’s a lot of thought and conviction involved. Everything I do is what I want, it’s complete, and I think that’s what makes my work consistent.’
‘Taking pictures is a state of mind,’ he continues. ‘For me, it’s like breathing. I look at the world every day, searching over thousands of pictures and adverts and films. Even books. It never ends. I’m interested in psychology, geography, politics… Photography is so much more than taking pictures. It’s about the human behind the camera, and who you are personally. The more I know about the world, the more curiosity I feel, the more it brings me inspiration.’
Motorbike racing was Patrick’s first muse, some three decades ago. An enthusiastic competitor in his own right, he started taking photos to support his brother’s journalistic studies and soon found himself talking to the editor of a French magazine. He was offered a six-month placement but stayed for the next four years, shooting road
WE HAVE TO FORGET EVERYTHING WE KNOW AND GET RID OF THE THINGS WE BRING TO A PLACE AS FOREIGNERS, SO WE CAN AWAKEN OUR SENSES AND LET OURSELVES DISCOVER.
tests and races. A leap into commercial photography came next and Patrick set off around the world to cover motorcycle Grand Prix meetings and capture manufacturer advertising campaigns. As time went on, he also shifted speciality from two wheels to four.
Corporate travel couldn’t satiate his need for adventure, so Patrick soon expanded into globe-trotting travel features. ‘I took bikes and explored the landscapes of China, Africa and all of South America,’ he smiles. ‘I rode straight across Australia too. When I have the time, even now, I love to produce travel stories.’ The same passion burns in the Icelandic collection. ‘Those photos really show the experience we were living. With no client and no creative brief, I could just choose images because they reflected a great moment or illustrated an interesting detail.’ And yet there’s still a clear narrative of exploration. A gaggle of shots clutter glaciers with tent canvas and sleeping bags, while others bounce along rough roads with the Land Rover.
‘The Defender came about through chance,’ he continues. ‘We were offered the opportunity to travel with it and I thought its shape was ideal. It doesn’t look too new and it’s somehow fitting for a journey across Iceland.’ Classic Land Rovers might lack the performance or refinement of their more modern counterparts, but Patrick never saw that as a disadvantage. ‘Travel is not a question of speed but of movement. There has to be slow movement of the body and the mind alike. You don’t need to go fast, you don’t need to be comfortable, but you do need to travel.’
A quarter century after he first arrived in Paris, Patrick made his biggest journey of all and relocated with his family to the West Coast of the United States. ‘I started thinking that I had perhaps 10 or 15 years left in my working life, and that I could follow that through in France or try something new.’ Projects with American advertisers, fashion magazines and car manufacturers
THE MORE I KNOW ABOUT THE WORLD, THE MORE CURIOSITY I FEEL, THE MORE IT BRINGS ME INSPIRATION
‘I go deeper into Iceland with each visit and every time I’m blown away.
There’s something very particular about this huge country with very few people in it – you can feel alone there.’
have developed his creative process in the years since. ‘The teams are bigger, the ideas are bigger, the locations are bigger here. All the expectations for my work are higher, and that’s very interesting from a professional perspective. Commercial work is art, but it’s art with rules.’
‘The move has given everybody a new story: it’s an adventure, and I wanted my wife and kids to have that experience. Travelling to places outside my – and our – comfort zone is something that’s very important to me.’ Neon-drenched Los Angeles and the arid California landscape have taken his personal projects in new directions too, Patrick shooting muscle cars like they’re on sixties film sets. ‘I’m telling different stories that end in new places but the global approach is identical,’ he adds. ‘You always start at the same point. I like that.’
Then there are the moments when Patrick doesn’t reach that first point at all. ‘I love photography and how it can freeze the moment you’re living, but occasionally
I’ll see things when I’m travelling that I don’t shoot. There are moments – maybe it’s selfish – that I don’t want to share.’ For Patrick the temporary is just as important as the permanent. ‘It’s nice to see a scene and let it pass. Things go away naturally and that’s the way of life.’ He feels the same way about his Icelandic saga. The photos make a touching souvenir, and one he still loves to share, but he’d rather look for new adventures.
‘I try to create, to be a chemist and an enthusiast who brings energy to people,’ he explains, ‘so the best story is always the next one. I have so many ideas and never enough time, plus everything I learn shows me something I don’t know. Unknown futures, unknown people, unknown places. It’s really not about the destination: travel is about discovering the unknown.’ Iceland remains his favourite location, a unique, desolate rock with a Martian landscape. And he will return. There are just other roads Patrick Curtet needs to travel first.
YOU DON’T NEED TO GO FAST, YOU DON’T NEED TO BE COMFORTABLE, BUT YOU DO NEED TO TRAVEL.
Iceland remains his favourite location, a unique, desolate rock with a Martian landscape.