Alfred Ehrhardt

In 1938, Alfred Ehrhardt, then in his thirties, embarked upon a two-month film-and-photography expedition through Iceland, visiting such now well-known landscape monuments as Dettifoss and Langsjokull. His tour of the island, which he navigated in a high-wheeled Ford and on horseback, was truly ambitious and often dangerous. Following his first photo series, Das Watt (Mudflats) and Die Kurische Nehrung (Curonian Spit), it was only logical that his quest for ''elementary manifestations of fundamental forces'' would lead him to this untouched ''primal landscape'' shaped by glaciers and volcanoes, where he hoped to gain insights into Earth's origin. This richly illustrated publication illuminates the context in which he worked, describes other Icelandic expeditions by German photographers and researchers during the 20s and 30s, and explores the typological approach to the landscape and the abstract, avant-garde visual vocabulary that set Ehrhardt apart.