Marco Di Marco
I am an Iceland-based photographer and visual journalist with a background in geology and licensed guiding.
Since the Reykjanes volcanic system reawakened in 2021, I have followed eruptions and seismic events on the ground and from the air, working for international media and on a long-term personal project. While assignments often begin with breaking news, I stay to document how roads are rebuilt, berms raised, and daily life adapts around new lava fields and closed towns.
I focus on the space where infrastructure, tourism, and unstable ground overlap, where a road, greenhouse, or parked car can reflect wider conditions. My approach is to work as close as safety allows, showing scenes as they are.
These images form part of an ongoing effort to document how Iceland navigates a new volcanic era, balancing access, protection, and life on an active rift.
At the Edge of Town, 2025, Grindavik, Iceland.
On 1 April 2025 a new fissure opened just 500 meters from the fishing town of Grindavik on the Reykjanes peninsula in southwest Iceland. I flew my drone to record how close the lava had come to the evacuated streets. The glowing line of fire runs along the new defensive berms that were built to keep flows away from the town and the road network. Beyond it you can see the harbour, houses and the Atlantic, all within a short distance of the vents. For me this frame shows what has changed in this volcanic cycle. The eruptions are no longer small events, isolated from infrastructures, accessible to the tourists. They are pressing right up against the places where people live and work, a reminder that in Iceland towns and volcanoes have to coexist in the same limited space.
A Powerful Onset, 2025, Svartsengi volcanic system, Reykjanes Peninsula, Iceland.
In the first hours of the November 2024 eruption at Svartsengi, I launched a drone to document the opening phase of the fissure. Lava was being discharged at an estimated 1,500 cubic metres per second, produced by a 3,5 km long fissure, sending fast moving flows across the ground and carving these parallel channels that branch and merge like a river system. In this volcanic cycle the pattern has been similar each time: an extremely powerful start, followed by a rapid drop and a more stable, lower effusion rate. I wanted this photograph to show that short but critical peak, when the volume of lava is high enough to threaten roads, power lines and other infrastructure in a matter of hours.
A Volcanic Siege, 2025, Grindavik, Iceland.
On 1 April 2025 a new fissure opened at Svartsengi, sending lava fountains into the air just behind the protective berms. In the foreground is a greenhouse already damaged during the seismic swarm and magmatic intrusion of November 2023. The berms had been completed months earlier and in this phase they worked exactly as intended, keeping the first fast lava front on the safe side while crews monitored the situation from behind the line. For me this photograph is as much about civil protection as it is about the eruption itself, a record of how planning and earthworks can hold back a very fast moving hazard.
Cones, 2025, Fjallabak, Iceland.
From the air, the landscape around these cones looks like a charcoal drawing. Wind and old lava flows have carved soft ridges and gullies, and a single road cuts across the scene on its way to a remote highland pass. A small vehicle is just visible on the tarmac. I am interested in how modern infrastructure threads through these old landforms, often following routes that will need to be revisited as the climate warms and freeze thaw cycles intensify. This image sits somewhere between map and portrait, a record of how humans currently interfere with terrain shaped by much older eruptions.
Contrasts, 2025, Svartsengi, Iceland.
On 8 February 2024, lava from the Svartsengi eruption overran the road that connects the area to the Blue Lagoon. From above, I watched the flow reach the tarmac and start to burn the surface, sending up small plumes of black smoke. I wanted to get a closer view of the lava flow front, trying to frame all the elements that can describe the situation: the molten lava, the road, the burning asphalt, and the snow covered terrain. This was one of the key access routes to the peninsula only hours before, now cut in a single morning. Both lava and snow frame the road, the only witness of human presence between these two powerful forces of nature.
After the Rain the Crater Breathes, 2021, Fagradalsfjall, Iceland.
In 2021, at Fagradalsfjall, a small vent grew into this cone in a matter of weeks. Shortly before I took this photograph a rain shower passed over the site, clearing the air. As the cloud moved away, the low sun lit the steam and gas plume from behind and turned it into a bright column above the crater. The person on the right hand ridge had hiked up earlier, while the weather was worse, and now watched the eruption from safe high ground. I wanted to show how quickly a new volcanic cone can rise from flat ground and how small a single observer appears beside it.