Olivier Joly, photographer and great reporter

After a career as a journalist, where he followed major sporting events, Olivier Joly decided to change his life to devote himself to travel and adventure. He produced, in particular, a magnificent photographic work on Iceland, a land of ice and lava, which he cherishes more than anything.

At the microphone of Bixente LizarazuOlivier Joly tells how he fell in love with Iceland, when he had already explored many countries.

In search of the most secluded places in Iceland

It was in September 1998, shortly after the football World Cup, thatOlivier Joly set foot in Iceland for the first time. As a sports journalist, he came to cover the match between France and Iceland. “I remember exactly when I set foot in Iceland. It was very early September, and when I got off the plane, I was gripped by freezing cold.he says.

He returned there in March 2001, in the middle of an extremely cold winter which gave the Icelandic lands the appearance of an arctic world. “Iceland was all white, it was very beautiful, but I hadn’t seen what makes this country special: the mosses and the colors”.

In 2009, Olivier Joly was able to rediscover Iceland in summer, at a time when nights don’t exist and it’s daytime almost all the time. He went to visit the island’s volcanic interior, geothermal areas and fjords. seduced by the diversity of landscapes and amazing colorsthe photographer had a thunderbolt : “There, I really took a big slap”he recalls.

A few months later, in 2010, with the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, Iceland became an essential tourist destination. While the boom in tourism was a lifesaver for Icelanders after the 2008 economic crisis, it has upset the calm that reigns in some places. Olivier Joly then set about look for more isolated places to feel all the power of Iceland: “You feel it when you are in places where there are not many people, where you are facing nature, not alone, but almost”he explains at the microphone of Bixente Lizarazu.

In these places, I still find the Iceland that I love, that is to say the deep, solitary Iceland, where we feel this isolation, and where we fully feel the force of nature – Olivier Joly

To find desert areas, he went to explore the East and North West Fjordsas well as the lands of the interior. More remote, these places are less easy to access and require more organization. “For example, to go to the Highlands, which are my favorite place in Iceland, you have to have a 4X4, and you have to be able to cross rivers and somewhat difficult tracks. The weather is often very very difficult there. Even in summer it can snow. It’s quite surprising”, he says. However, they allowed him to find deep and lonely Iceland. There, he was able to fully feel the force of nature, without being disturbed by the passage of a bus or a car. Nevertheless, in his quest to come face-to-face with nature, Olivier Joly never strayed from unmarked paths so as not to trample the mosses and to avoid getting lost.

Since 2012, Olivier Joly has been going to Iceland every fall to take refuge in the interior highlands : “There is nothing apart from the small shelters which welcomed the transhumance of the sheep, and which, today, have become refuges which welcome tourists. We are really immersed in a place where we are face to face with glaciers, with volcanoes, with deserts. They are not deserts of sand, but deserts of black or red stones”.

The photographer who published two books following his travels in Iceland, Four seasons in Iceland and Sagaadvises everyone to discover this magical country.