For more than four decades, Icelandic photographer Ragnar Axelsson, better known as RAX, has been travelling through the Arctic, documenting the people, animals, and landscapes that make this part of the world so extraordinary. His photographs capture a delicate relationship between humans and nature, often revealing stories that might otherwise go unnoticed. The images are striking, but their real strength lies in the lives they bring closer to us.

His relationship with photography began when he was just ten years old. During childhood summers on farms in eastern Iceland, he borrowed his father’s Leica camera and started photographing farmers, birds, and landscapes. He was fascinated by the people he met and wondered what their world might look like a century later. That curiosity eventually became the foundation of his life’s work.

Axelsson’s photographs have appeared in National Geographic, LIFE, Time, Newsweek, and GEO. His achievements include numerous Icelandic photojournalism awards, an Honourable Mention in the Leica Oskar Barnack Award, and the 2016 Icelandic Literary Prize for non-fiction for Faces of the North. He has also received Iceland’s Order of the Falcon.

Yet recognition is only part of the story. In a 2026 conversation with The United Nations of Photography, Axelsson reflected on photography as his life’s passion and emphasized the importance of honesty in documentary work. He also discussed photographers who influenced him, including W. Eugene Smith, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Mary Ellen Mark, and Don McCullin. After all these years, his approach remains remarkably simple: go where the stories are, spend time with the people, and keep looking. Through his photographs, the Arctic’s people and their stories have a chance to remain visible long after the ice has changed.

All photographs on this article by Ragnar Axelsson.