about rebekka guðleifsdóttir … Visual artist and photographer.

“All photographs are taken by myself (also the ones with me in them) and all post-processing is done by me.

I am self-taught. I decided to become a photographer in May of 2005. There is nothing i would rather do.

I primarily shoot digital, because it’s more accessible, but i work with film whenever i get the chance and i have a darkroom at my disposal.”

IEX: Rebekka, how did all this start?
RG: I really just fell into photography without planning to be a photographer. I worked for three years in a coffee shop and would do pencil drawings when things were slow. I sold a few, and hoped that I would eventually become a painter.  But then I discovered that I could make photos that looked like what I wanted to paint, and they didn’t take 4 months to produce! Plus, I was a hopeless painter.

You’re obviously a good photographer – your Flickr site has received well over 4 million hits.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s been too fast. Flickr is a bit of a monster. I owe a lot of my success to the site, but it has also forced me to become “professional” about my work very quickly. When I started posting pictures I was really just messing around, having fun taking shots of myself or whatever came to mind. As the popularity of the site grew and I learned more of my craft, it became more about creating art through photography.

excerpt from interview on Iceland Express