Life Lines: River Trees of The Icelandic Highlands

• Photographer
  Nicholas Dunn

From above, the braided rivers of Iceland’s highlands draw their own forests. Glacial melt inks black sand; sulphur and moss flare yellow; silt turns water milky blue. In each frame a tree appears—spring bud, summer canopy, autumn gold, winter bare—then vanishes as the flow shifts. I spent days tracing these living diagrams from the air, watching weather and light rewrite them by the hour. They are maps and myths at once: water looking like wood, lifelines threading a volcanic desert. The series follows the seasons, a search for a tree of life written in water, flown by drone in the highlands.

Nicholas Dunn began photographing at age ten, inspired by his father and grandmother. From the Kansas plains to landscapes abroad, he developed a style rooted in abstraction, where nature reads like drawing or design. By eighteen, his work earned international recognition, including multiple honors at the International Photography Awards with a second place in Architecture/Historic. Through fire, water, ice, and land, Nicholas seeks to reveal the patterns and fleeting visions etched by the earth itself.