Since 1975, Roni Horn (born 1955) has made regular trips to Iceland, where she finds inspiration in a solitude which contrasts with her life in New York. She is best known as an artist who has introduced personal elements to minimalist sculpture, for example embedding fragments of poetic text, taken from Wallace Stevens, Emily Dickinson and others, in blocks of machine-finished aluminium. In Iceland she photographs aspects of the landscape, homing in on things which are often overlooked. This doubled image shows the nest of an Eider duck; in one of the region's few surviving cottage industries, the down from the ducks' vacated nests is harvested for use in quilts and garments. Usually Eider ducks lay eggs in pairs so this single (but pictorially paired) egg is unusual. Horn has deliberately chosen a printing process - Iris printing - which is characterised by a soft open texture analogous to the softness of the down itself.

This print was published by Counter Editions in 2000 in a portfolio of 14 works by contemporary artists.