Where it began
I was thirteen years old when I first walked into a herd of free-roaming horses. We were on holiday with my parents, somewhere on a long walk through nature, when the path opened up and there they were. Not behind a fence. Not waiting to be ridden. Just there, in the landscape they belonged to.
I do not remember the names of the place. I do not remember the date. I remember the feeling. The kind of stillness that settles over you when you realise you have walked into something that does not need you. I stood still and watched, and something in me settled.
The Icelandic horse came into my life later. But when it did, I recognised something in them that took me back to that walk. The same quiet presence. The same sense of being whole on their own, without needing me to look at them.
This project did not start with a plan. It started with standing in a field, observing a group of Icelandic horses. Collecting foals to photograph. No performance. No posing. No movement that asked to be seen. Just the quiet rhythm of a herd being a herd.
For years I photographed Icelandic horses in different settings. Beautiful moments. Strong portraits during client sessions. But something kept pulling me back to the horses in nature, without people around. The herd. The mares. The foals. The subtle distances between bodies. The way one horse lifts its head and the others respond.
Somewhere between waiting and watching, I realised this was no longer a collection of photographs. It was becoming a long-term study of Icelandic horses, herd life and foals.
Not dramatic. Not spectacular. But attentive.
I am drawn to the beauty of the Icelandic horse breed, the quiet strength of the group, the characters. To how landscape, weather and time shape their presence. To how foals discover the world. To what becomes visible when nothing is forced.
Icelandic horses are small on the outside and vast on the inside. Stoic and majestic at the same time. They stand closer to nature than most domesticated breeds, with a way of moving — those gaits, that rhythm — that is unlike anything else.
This is where I begin.
