Ragnar Axelsson, Rax, (b. 1958) is an Icelandic photojournalist who has has spent the last 30 years photographing the people, weather, and landscape in some of the most remote and isolated regions of the Arctic including Iceland, Greenland, and Siberia. He has been a photographer at the Icelandic newspaper, Morgunbladid, since 1976, and has also worked on free-lance assignments all over the world, documenting the uprisings in Latvia and Lithaunia; the lives of Yakut farmers and herders; AIDS patients in Mozambique and South Africa; the landscape of Antarctica; and other work in China and the Ukraine. Rax’s work has been featured in publications such as LIFE, Newsweek, Stern, GEO, National Geographic, Time, and Polka, and has also been exhibited widely. He has published 6 books in various international editions, his most recent, Andlit Nordursins (The Face of The North), winning the 2016 Icelandic Book Prize. Ragnar has won numerous awards for his work including over 20 Icelandic Photojournalist Awards;The Leica Oskar Barnack Award (Honorable Mention); The Grand Prize, Photo de Mer, Vannes; and Iceland’s highest honor, the Order of the Falcon, Knight’s Cross, for his work in the Arctic.
