Behind Mountains

Ragnar Axelsson, also known as Rax, (b. 1958, Iceland), has been photographing the people, animals, and landscape of the most remote regions of the Arctic, including Iceland, Siberia, and Greenland. In stark black-and-white images, he captures the elemental, human experience of nature at the edge of the liveable world, making visible the extraordinary relationships between the people of the Arctic and their extreme environment - relationships now being altered in profound and complex ways by the unprecedented changes in climate. He was a photojournalist at Morgunbladid, the leading Icelandic newspaper, (1976-2020), and has worked on freelance assignments in Latvia, Lithuania, Mozambique, South Africa, China and Ukraine. His photographs have been featured in LIFE, Newsweek, Stern, GEO, National Geographic, Time, and Polka, and have been exhibited widely.