Like so many artists and photographers before her, Sabine Mirlesse had always been intrigued by Iceland, mainly because it exists on a continental divide, making it the site of frequent seismic activity.

Inspired by the story of a small village that was blanketed in ash and lava following a volcanic eruption in the 1970s, the Paris-based photographer arrived on the island with little idea of what to expect, but ended up staying for three months. Travelling on the back of an invitation from the Association for Icelandic Visual Artists, she pursued the story of the village as the basis for a new body of work titled As if it should have been a quarry.

"The inhabitants of the town chose to dig up their homes and continue living there," she explains. "All but a few houses were not only salvaged but restored, and now you wouldn't necessarily know that the entire village was once buried in the ground. The work began with this story and then evolved based on the complex relationship I found Icelanders to have with their landscape - a landscape constantly in flux."

It proved a ripe subject for Mirlesse, who says she uses photography "to explore the person as landscape... holding histories as complex and unique as the experiences of any one individual, holding layers of years and weather gone by". The American- born photographer says she is looking at "how a single image can move the viewer to a memory of his or her own - how the familiarity of the photographed can work as a trigger for one's past and draw it into the present, creating a very immediate experience of the passage of time."

Right now she needs more time to finish her project. "There are a few stones left unturned, a few more people I want to speak with, and one more region I want to visit for the project," which, she hopes, will then be published in book form.

Visit www.sabinemirlesse.com.

Image © Sabine Mirlesse.

Image © Sabine Mirlesse.

Image © Sabine Mirlesse.