Fotograf Magazine

For the first time, Magdalena Jetelová has taken her measures on nothing less than the earth and the development of earth history in her Iceland Project (1992). Iceland is situated on the Central Atlantic Shelf which runs on the bottom of the ocean on a length of approximately 15,000 kilometers and forms the separating line between the conti­nents of America on one side and Europe and Africa on the other side. It is part of a shelf system encompassing the whole earth on nearly 70,000 kilometers, a shelf on which the continents are shifting. In 1912, the meteorologist Ernst Otto Wegener first formulated this theory of continental shifting. During the 1960s the theory could be substantia­ted, and one could now describe the forming of continents and the reasons: Tectonic tensions create cracks allowing hot magma to rise and push apart the continents. The Central Atlantic Shelf consists of such cracks. The only place above the sea where it can be seen, or rather sensed, as a deep fissure called ‘Ingvellir’ lies in the north of Iceland. It reaches through the earth’s crust and remains, until today, an active volcanic zone. Often the cracks cannot be recognized clearly due to land or water fillings in some places there are geysers, hot springs.