Emma Geiger standing out on a field

To Iceland and Back

Duke alum Emma Geiger on tracing her Icelandic roots in Til Íslands

To Iceland and Back

Duke alum Emma Geiger on tracing her Icelandic roots in Til Íslands

This is a summary of an interview by Carol Bales on Duke Center for Documentary Studies.

Duke MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts alum Emma Geiger held onto an idea long before it fully took shape. The idea, first proposed in 2018, was to trace her family’s Icelandic roots. It has become Til Íslands (“To Iceland”), a new exhibition at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies (CDS). Visit the exhibition, on view through October 2. 

The Pitch: Holding on to a Good Idea

Geiger first imagined the project while studying at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. Last summer, with support of the Cassilhaus Biannual Travel Fellowship, she was able to travel to Iceland and connect with distant relatives. She worked across mediums to explore ancestry, place and environmental change.

“My great, great grandparents were from Iceland and came to New Jersey in 1888, but I didn’t have much family context about them or about what their lives were like there. That curiosity drove me to want to go and explore and learn about that side of the family.”

The Process: Building Across Mediums and Time

Til Íslands brings together photography, moving images, phytograms and textiles made with natural dyes. Drawing on time spent at her family’s farm near Lake Apavatn and a residency in Skagaströnd, the work reflects a delicate process of reconnecting with both place and history while engaging broader questions of environmental change.

“I learned a lot and gained a lot of appreciation for my own family history. It made me think about my own place in the timeline of life on Earth differently.”

The Advice: Just Start Documenting

For those beginning documentary work, Geiger emphasizes openness over certainty — encouraging artists to gather material and let meaning emerge over time.

“If you don’t have a final product in mind, that’s okay. There are so many ways of documenting, like journaling. Just start gathering material and then at some point maybe the material will show itself to want to be something.”

Read the full interview with Emma Geiger on The Center for Documentary Studies.