All clothing by Nikita. Hair & makeup by Steinunn Þórðar. Models: Andrea, Gabby & Isabelle. Photographic assistant: Charlie Kelly. Post production by Jamie Farquharson.

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Click here for the story in Contributor Magazine.

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The foundation is spearheaded by Olaf and Eva Guerrand-Hermes, who have generously supported me in the past by acquiring a number of my prints.

The Beach was shot on a remote peninsula on the Westfjords of Iceland in October 2002. I brought a team of ten people out there on a borrowed coach that had been turned into a sleeper. We got there at 3 in the morning and drove the coach straight into a ditch. Being too tired to deal with it in the dark, we went to sleep.

The following morning it started snowing. We spent the day shooting on the beach, but because of the cold weather we could only shoot in short bursts before the girls turned purple. Fortunately there was an old geothermal pool down by the sea where we kept the girls warm between shots. By the time we finished, the problem of getting the coach out of the ditch remained.

A local farmer brought his tractor and pulled us out, but in the process the coach crashed into the tractor, severely damaging both vehicles. At that point it was quite late in the evening and the already treacherous mountain roads were iced over. The coach was equipped with tires that struggled on wet tarmac, let alone on the steep and icy mountain roads, so the hero farmer ended up pulling the coach over the mountain pass.

He took us to an old herring factory that moonlights as an inn, where we cooked loads of pasta and got drunk. After promising the farmer that I’d sort out the repair for his traumatized tractor, we headed back towards Reykjavík early the next morning in our severely banged up coach.

It took me a year to pay off the damages to the two vehicles, in installments, but the pictures turned out great.

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One day we were shooting in what we thought was this really picturesque area: run down houses, all painted in pastels and lined up along massive, wide streets. We parked the cars and started shooting on a street corner. After a while I realized certain cars were cruising by us veeeery slowly with alarming regularity. I was starting to feel a little apprehensive when a police car drove up and asked us where we were from.

“I don’t know if you realize this, but you kinda stand out.”

Waving around expensive electronics while hanging out with a bunch of cute girls, who are feverishly dancing to gangster rap while simultaneously peeling off their clothes on a street corner in one of Miami’s roughest ghettos was not his idea of blending in, apparently.

He told us there had been 5 armed robberies that same morning in that same neighborhood and we’d be well advised to get the hell out of there, fast.

“Welcome to America,” he added sarcastically before driving off.

So we drove off to the Fashion District, where the girls could dance without being shot and raped.

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And since my mate Crispin has been telling me for years to “bloody well sort out your website,” I’m dedicating this first entry to him.

Crispin is a tropical creature that thrives best in temperatures well above 35° C, in areas bounteous with food and drink. These rare and intimate pictures are taken in his natural habitat.