Jessica Auer

An Icelandic legacy, the word ‘saga’ means both ‘history’ and ‘story’. As memory dissolved behind the myths, these stories became part fiction and part documentary. In this body of work, I take inspiration from Viking Age history and Saga literature. Focusing on the narrative potential of landscape, I photographed archaeological and saga sites throughout the North Atlantic, resulting in a series of large-scale photographs that trace a westward journey from Sweden to the New World. These landscapes are largely ahistorical; they “contain” history yet invite speculation. I appreciate how this is our own doing. As we humans move about altering the landscape– new layers are laid, old ones redacted. As such, the landscape becomes a stratified space where subjective perspectives are encouraged to take shape.