{"id":1034,"date":"2014-11-11T13:32:07","date_gmt":"2014-11-11T20:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=1034"},"modified":"2014-11-11T14:19:31","modified_gmt":"2014-11-11T21:19:31","slug":"photo-story-my-iceland-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.timporter.com\/seconddraft\/?p=1034","title":{"rendered":"Photo Story: My Iceland Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Iceland<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to come,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s weird. You\u2019ll like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I had been in Reykjavik for more than a week photographing homeless people, alcoholics, Elvis freaks and massive gym rats<\/strong> known as power-lifters. Mary Ellen Mark was leading a workshop and after assurances from her that Iceland offered enough oddities to suit my visual tastes I\u2019d made the trip.<\/p>\n

Mary Ellen was right, as usual. Beyond the ubiquitous blondes, behind the unrelenting civility, and underneath the itchy woolen sweaters, there was plenty of weird<\/strong>. I found all I could of it and made some decent photos in the time I had. I was doing what I often do while traveling: looking for interesting people and ignoring the tourist attractions.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all well and good when I am in New York or Paris or Oaxaca, places I have the good fortune to visit regularly, but Iceland might have been an once-in-a-lifetime trip<\/strong> and the people I\u2019d met and photographed could have lived anywhere in the world. After all, an alcoholic who lives in shipping container resembles similarly broken people in the U.S. \u2013 even if her name is Sigrun. I had been photographing Icelanders, not Iceland.<\/p>\n

The country is a geologic amusement park<\/strong> chock full of glaciers, fjords and fumaroles, none of which I had seen. Nor had I walked on lava, slid on ice or dunked myself in the warm waters of the Blue Lagoon.<\/p>\n

And that is how, in an 11th-hour effort to fill that gap two days before my return flight to San Francisco, I found myself on a gray, blustery Sunday riding in a small station-wagon being driven by Ellen Inga, one of the workshop\u2019s photography interns. She was taking me on a fast-forward tour of the volcanic landscape<\/strong> east of Reykjavik.<\/p>\n