Magdalena Jetelová's "Iceland Project"

While updating a Photo 1 lecture, I rediscovered Magdalena Jetelová's Iceland Project (rather I researched an image I thought I knew a lot about and was very surprised that its source came from Iceland, the country I am currently enamored with). All the images featured in this post come from Jetelová's website and are from 1991. The information below comes from this article written in 2014. The photographs were made with lasers, visually retracing the continental shelves.

"The Central Atlantic Shelf is an approximately 15,000 kilometer-long mountain range, mostly hidden at the bottom of the ocean. From the geological point of view it forms the dividing line between Europe and America. This is a seam along the place where millions years ago two continents were torn apart. Today we know that the Central Atlantic Shelf is part of a bigger system which circles the entire globe for nearly 70,000 kilometers. It goes from Iceland to the north between Spitzbergen and Greenland, continuing through the Arctic Ocean to the mouth of the Lena River in Siberia. In the southern direction, it goes from Iceland eastward along the southern end of Africa, continuing to the north through the Indian Ocean. Iceland is the only place where the Central Atlantic Shelf goes above the sea."

"The geological border between Europe and America can be seen with the naked eye for about 350 kilometers in the form of a range which cuts through Iceland in a north-eastern direction. Both land masses are still moving, shifting and bumping into one another."

"Therefore the whole area is seismically active with a number hot springs and active volcanoes. The light line of the laser beam draws the border between the two continents. The form of the exact direct line is all the time freshly defined by its touch with the terrain—it goes through the raw landscape along the lava fields, through cracks disappearing in the mist of hot steam from geysers. The computer-determined precise line of a geological event in ancient time that has formed our world of today."