The Iceland Defense Force was a military command of the United States Armed Forces from 1951 to 2006, aimed at providing for the defense of Iceland. The base of the IDF was at Miðnesheiði near the town Keflavík in Southwest Iceland, where the main international airport of Iceland is now situated.
On September 30, 2006, the last remaining IDF forces left Iceland and handed the control of the military base to the Icelandic authorities. Shortly after the photographer Bragi Þór Jósefsson visited the area and documented the atmosphere among the abandoned houses and military
installations of the IDF. In his photographs, Bragi Þór Jósefsson both aligns
himself with and contests the established aesthetics of the ruin and the aura
of abandoned places. Contrasted with the structures and the culture that exists
outside the perimeter of the military base, the non-presence of the vanished inhabitants
from another cultural world underlines the otherworldliness of the military accommodations
and structures. Yet the barren landscape and the subarctic weather point the to
reality of the location, the uncompromising Icelandic nature that eventually engulf
the abandoned American world.
Bragi Þór
Jósefsson is a full-time professional photographer based in his
hometown of Reykjavik, Iceland. He has worked for many international clients in
many areas of photography, including The Guardian, Wallpaper, The Wall
Street Journal, Forbes magazine and National Geographic. His work has
been exhibited by museums and galleries, both locally and abroad and several
books have been published with his work.