To produce the images of They are lost as soon as they are made, Karen Zalamea built a large-format 4 × 5 analogue film camera for which she created biconvex lenses by freezing local water samples from Iceland in specially fabricated moulds. With the camera and ice lenses, Zalamea photographed the Icelandic landscape. The work explores the camera and its optics as sites for experimentation, the translational capacity of photography, the perimeters of vision, and the possibilities of the landscape to reveal and render its own image.

This artist book presents the full suite of colour photographs of They are lost as soon as they are made, with essays by Katie Belcher and Sara Matthews.