By Hallgrímur Helgason.
The photo doesn’t lie. We lie to it. We “fool up” our faces, illuminate them with our inner image, bring to them our idea of ourselves before the light bursts upon them. We walk out of time and enter the house of lenses with a corrected smile, faces made up with a desperate longing, in our eyes the desire to be different from what we are. Our look: a compromise of fact and wishful thinking. Only the nose stands out, straight and unmovable, the first thing to appear on the bottom of the developing tray, standing out from the liquid: Saves us from drowning in self-deception.
When a photographer walks into the bar the atmosphere changes. Be careful in the presence of the camera. At the bar the conversation slows down, the mind arranges its face, people furnish themselves with a smile in case the flash gets them. Movements become two-dimensional, ready for print. At the tables eyes light up, with both longing to have their picture taken and fear of being too much like they are. At the party the photographer is an armed man. Everybody's nervous that he’ll start to shoot.
I’ve never seen Eiður nor Einar Snorri with a camera.
They don’t hang their profession around their necks; they meet you unarmed, smiling with their big eyes forever surprised and boyishly happy about everything they see. Rather than being driven away by a flashing light, people are drawn to them by their ever focusing curiosity and four big fish-lenses. The Snorri's are photographers, not men with cameras. As with every good artist the use of technique is secondary, one doesn't even suspect that they had taken these pictures with a camera. Eyes are enough. I see them like photocells in the middle of a group of people or sitting drowned into themselfs and a sofa in the corner under a booming speaker getting pictures in their head rather than taking them.
Neither Einar nor Eiður approaches you with an on/off-finger on the button, you come to them. The people in these pictures do not look in to the camera, they look at Einar Snorri, at Eiður Snorri. Their photos are ideas. They light up like a flashlight in their head and light up the subject. For an instant it beats upon the face like a blow. A blow up - blow. Its momentary force blows the hair. Light moulds a forehead, nose and chin.
These are classic and straight forward portraits. By baring the subjects* shoulders and breast the photographer eliminates the temporary neck-line. In turn, the pictures acquire a timeless sense and bring to mind the busts of the past. They even recall ancient Greek sculpture. A blow up - chisels blow. Appolo, Bacchus, Venus...
The models meet you, with random noses and carefully chosen mouths. Thoughts are unspoken words. They linger in the corners of the mouth. Closed lips tell more than open ones. Most of them meet the flash with their mouth shut. They express themselves with pursed lips, retracted or an underlining lower lip. A wry "horse-shoe" or a microwave-grin. In a gentle dimple you can read the story of a life. Others bare their teeth with a half-open sigh, a wondering gap or a wide-open smile. Some close their eyes.
In every open eye there is a small white dot, a twinkle from a flashlight: The photographer's presence.
