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Guillaume Demerliac
@guillaume_demerliac
Landscape photographer based in Iceland
For as long as I can remember, I have been a creative person. As a child I loved to draw and I was always fascinated by the idea of mythical and uncharted worlds. I used to want to create my own imaginary world in whatever way possible as I dreamed about discovering new ones as the great explorers once did before me. Thanks to my parents, I grew up fortunate enough to travel to many countries and also live in many different countries.
"My adventurous childhood has definitely shaped the person I am today as it helped me see so much of the world and its beauty."
I am 25 years old and I have lived in France, Finland, Malaysia, UK and now Iceland. In recent years I have not stayed in one place for long periods of time as I am simply not very good at staying put. Moving around is not too much of a challenge for me, and although I always fear a new move, I know that the pros have always outweigh the cons. Living and experiencing different cultures are probably the most valuable experiences one could have, they truly open the mind and make you realise that we’re all the same at our core with only beautiful cultures and customs to share. This reality means that I do not fear discovering unknown places and unknown cultures. Adapting to new cultures has always been such a pleasure and I like to believe that it has enriched me as a person.
"I would say that my ‘unconventional’ lifestyle today is a result of my ‘unconventional’ childhood, a lifestyle that feels very natural to me nonetheless."
The places I have experienced and the friendships that I have made along the way also helped develop my urges to create, whether it was through music, art or photography. I was about 17 when I first understood the potential of photography, I was living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and I travelled to Nepal for a few days with my parents. At the time, I only had an iphone 4 as a camera, and a little multi-optical lens that would attach to it. It wasn’t much but I felt inspired, I saw the world in a new way and started to understand that I could portray my mythical world through the power of photography. Kathmandu is to this day one of the most fascinating places I’ve seen – everywhere you look, something is happening. I believe that was the trip that started it all for me.
Nowadays I find myself in Iceland. My parents lived here in 1989, before I was born (in France). As a child they took me and my sister for some days to Iceland and although I was young I got my first taste of Iceland from that trip. In 2017, during the summer break at University in the UK, some friends and I decided to fly to Iceland and rent a car for six days to drive all around Iceland. Armed with my Fuji X-T10 at the time, I was in awe of the beautiful landscapes that it holds and I knew then that this could be a country I’d like to move to. When I finished my degree at University, I managed to find a job in Reykjavik, an opportunity that I jumped at as it enabled me to live there for a bit. The following two years I was living on and off between Iceland and the UK. The cost of living in Iceland was so high at the time for me which made it difficult to live comfortably.
In March 2020 I was lucky enough to travel to Ilulissat, Greenland, where I got to see with my own eyes the vast expanses of icebergs and the truly remote yet happy lives of the residents there. As a photographer I was amazed by everything I saw. I remember sitting on the side of a mountain looking out onto a vast landscape of frozen fjords and icebergs as big as mountains. The remoteness and pure serenity of the place is something I’d never quite experienced before. It was -20 degrees celsius and very windy but I was shielded by some rocks behind me. Amongst the quietness I could hear the haunting noise of fracturing ice.
"As I looked out onto the ice-fjord, I saw a lone Greenlandic Inuit fisherman on the ice fishing through a whole he had just made in the vastness of this frozen world."
"My favourite photo is probably the one I took when I saw this lonesome fisherman on the ice."
At the time I wished I had a bigger zoom lens to be able to get closer to him but I only had an 18-55mm lens for the shot which ended up playing to my advantage. Because I was so far away, the shot ended up showing not only the small black figure of the fisherman, but also the beautiful frozen fjord he was standing on, next to a colossal iceberg. The shot means a lot to me because every time I see it, it takes me back to this mountain I was sitting on, looking into the infinite glacial landscapes of Greenland, whilst witnessing the beautiful yet harsh isolation of this man.
"The sight of this true isolation has resonated with me ever since and has inspired me to venture even further in search of true isolation."
Remoteness and the Poles fascinate me and that is why I love Iceland so much and why I’d like to visit more of Greenland, Faroe Islands and Svalbard eventually to expand my photography portfolio. The dream would also be to visit the Holy Grail of remoteness, Antarctica. One day hopefully, I will. Also, my photography, so far, has been mainly about landscapes and nature but an ambition of mine is to travel to the most remote places in the world and document cultures in beautiful landscapes through photography. Mongolia and Tibet are some of the places I’d like to do this.
An analogy that I often use to describe the relationship between my experience, my photography and my editing is this: When I am in a place, surrounded by beauty, there is an emotional manifestation within me that cannot be captured by just taking the photograph. The photograph will always show what is there but it will only very rarely convey the feeling of actually being there to the viewer. When I edit, I try to convey not only the beauty of the place but also the emotional experience that I felt whilst being there.
"I like to play with the shades of the dominant colour and not have too much complexity."
This way I can try to convey, besides the visual detail, the emotional aspect of the scene. Sometimes the best trips and the best photographs aren’t the most exotic ones, but those that you get to share with your loved ones. Being family or friends, there is something special about discovering or rediscovering a place with those closest to you. It’s the emotion that makes the difference.
I have been lucky enough to have incredibly supportive family and friends who have always encouraged my photography and made me believe that I should be sharing it with the world. This support pushes me to keep going and to keep sharing my work to those who are interested. We are always our harshest critic so if I’d not gotten this support I would probably have been much more reluctant to share my photography. Those who have supported me from the start and those who support me today will know who they are and I thank them from the bottom of my heart. They have given me the confidence to keep going.
"I don’t know where photography will take me, but I guess that’s what an adventure is all about."
Adventure has taken me to so many places and it has brought me more value than anything. Traveling to different countries has opened my eyes to the beauty of culture, a foundation of humanity that should be celebrated, not be a subject of division.
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