Viðar Logi on making Björk’s earthy album artwork
When Björk unveiled the artwork for her stompy single Atopos – the first track from her new album, Fossora – the credits contained the usual roles expected in a shoot: creative direction, styling, production. But next to M/M Paris’ credit for the typography was the unexpected, yet intrinsic, job of creating the spores.
Fossora is a term invented by Björk denoting a feminine version of ‘fossore’, meaning ‘digger’ or ‘delver’ in Latin. The album visuals are appropriately “very spore-y, very mushroom-y”, says Viðar Logi, the Icelandic imagemaker, now based in London, who shot the album cover, the Atopos artwork, and a suite of further imagery that’s been trickling out over the last few weeks. In the album cover, she wears a wig by Tomihiro Kono that’s designed to resemble mycelium, and a dress and neckpiece that both appear more like biological sculptures than garments. The philosophy appears to be earthy yet decadent – like truffles buried in the soil.
It all comes to life through the lens of Logi, whose back catalogue of portraits and fashion editorials illustrates a taste for images that are warped and futuristic at the same time as fluid and organic. These sensibilities feel right at home in the context of Björk’s latest chapter of music, which brings together her innovative, forward-facing streak with a certain rootedness as she reflects on ancestry and motherhood.
The fantasy language the team – co-creative directed by Björk and longtime collaborator James T. Merry – have crafted is opulent and otherworldly. So it’s surprising to learn that, aside from the spores, very little visual effects work features in Logi’s photos. The elaborate sets designed by Heimir Sverrisson are the biggest red herring in this regard; many would’ve surely drawn on CGI, but his were painstakingly built and installed.
Top: Still from the music video for Atopos directed by Vidar Logi; Above: Fossora album cover photographed by Vidar Logi