Ragnar Axelsson

Who is Ragnar Axelsson?

Ragnar Axelsson, who also calls himself RAX, is an Icelandic photographer. He has been a staff photographer of Morgunblaðið since 1976. Ragnar has done work and stories for various agencies and magazines, shooting in Iceland, the Faroes, Greenland, Indonesia, Scandinavia, and Siberia.

Ragnar has been traveling to the Arctic for almost three decades. His images have won him recognition as a documentary photographer. He has had photographs and picture essays published in Life, National Geographic Magazine, Le Figaro, Stern, La Vanguardia, Time, and elsewhere.

Ragnar's book Andlit Norðursins is a collection of his black-and-white photographs of vanishing ways of life in Iceland, the Faroes and Greenland taken over a period of fifteen years. His most recent book, Last Days of the Arctic, has won critical acclaim, with multiple photo features in the New York Times and exhibitions most recently in Iceland and Ireland. As a photography "Book of the Year", the Times described his work as 'remarkable', 'beautiful', and 'a gift for the eyes, mind and heart'. This body of work presents a unique record of daily life and culture of some of the most remote communities in the world, and the twilight of their society.