Author: Anika Burgess / Source: Atlas Obscura
One morning last July, the photographer Matt Emmett emerged from his tent next to Rauðasandur Beach and went for a walk. He had just begun a five-day trip through the Westfjords, Iceland’s westernmost region, and while walking along a 6-mile stretch of red sand, he noticed something.
“I stopped and realized I was totally alone,” he says. “The only sound was the wind, the cries of arctic terns swooping above my head and the distant breakers crashing against the shore.”Iceland is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. Two-thirds of the entire population lives in Reykjavik; less than 2 percent lives in the Westfjords. Ísafjörður, the largest town in the Westfjords, has a population of about 2,600. It’s a remote area within an isolated island, and seemed, at least initially, an unusual choice for Emmett, who usually specializes in abandoned architecture.
The trip had been arranged by Pentax, for whom Emmett is a brand ambassador. The plan was to test out a new camera by shooting landscapes, alongside another Pentax ambassador, the photographer Bill Ward. But, Emmett recalls, “as the trip neared I noticed in photos online that there appeared to be lots of abandoned houses and farms dotting the landscape.” He…
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