Pétur Thomsen

Pétur Thomsen focuses on the transformation of land through human intervention. He examines the friction between industrial development and fragile ecosystems, creating images that are both documentary and critical. Pétur Thomsen turns his lens toward landscapes under transformation, documenting the encroachment of human intervention on natural systems. His long-term photographic series charts the incremental shifts in the land. Thomsen draws attention to the marks of human intervention; mines, tree plantations, and cultivated land. The stark contrasts and nocturnal stillness suggest a slow violence at work, change that creeps rather than crashes.

In Teigskógur, Pétur presents a series of photographs taken in the forest Teigskógur, capturing the aftermath of a violent human intervention in a once-pristine forest. The images document the moment when a mulcher was used to tear through the birch trees, clearing the way for a highly controversial road construction project. Presented in a grid, the close-up shots of shredded wood, broken branches, and disturbed moss lay bare the brutality of this mechanized intrusion. The repetition and variation across the frames evoke a sense of systematic destruction, making visible a slow violence often hidden in infrastructural development.