() BAR, SPACE, STUDIO                                                                                                        





JÓN HELGI PÁLMASON

23.10.25 – 31.01.26
Yzta Annesið


Jón Helgi Pálmason is a photographer currently based in The Hague, Netherland.

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At an unknown point in history, a great plague is said to have wiped out the entire population of Melrakkaslétta, leaving only two survivors: a man in the eastern part of the region and a woman in the west. As they journeyed through the landscape, moving from farm to farm in search of others, their paths eventually crossed in the middle of Melrakkaslétta, now known as Meyjarþúfa (“Virgin’s knoll”). There, it is said that a new generation was born.


Yzta Annesið (The Farthest North) is the culmination of a five-year photographic exploration of Melrakkaslétta, the northernmost region of Iceland, at the edge of the Arctic Circle. Rooted in personal heritage and a longing to reconnect, the work spans two interconnected series: one focused on the village of Raufarhöfn, the birthplace of the photographer’s mother and a community shaped by the rise and fall of the Herring Years in the 1950s and ’60s; the other on the surrounding 
countryside of Melrakkaslétta, where the vast and unyielding landscape becomes both subject and mirror of the photographer’s connection to the region.

Through photography, archival material, and found objects, the work reflects on how inherited memory and the natural environment coalesce to shape identity. It asks how landscapes hold stories, how they inform who we are, and what remains when a place continues without us. In an era of rapid environmental and societal change, the project, part social document and part personal journey, gently examines the tension between survival and loss, and the connection between landscape, history, and home.