Frozen in Time: The Mountain
Photography of Vittorio Sella
24 June - 14 September 2008
Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art
Vittorio Sella (1859-1943) is one of those people who have managed to successfully pursue two of his passions simultaneously: mountaineering and photography. Frozen in Time: The Mountain Photography of Vittorio Sella at the Estorick Collection offers a rare opportunity to admire and explore this little known photographer and pioneering mountaineer.
Vittorio Sella was born and died in Biella, in the northern Piedmont region of the Italian Alps, not far from the peaks of Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa. Vittorio undertook many mountaineering and photographic adventures, which were to consume him for many years. His travels took him on expeditions to the Caucasus in 1889, 1890 and 1896, to the Saint Elias range in Alaska in 1897, to Sikkim and Nepal in 1899, to the Ruwenzori in Uganda in 1906 and to the Karakoram and Western Himalayas in 1909.
Sella’s images transcend the conventional ‘travel’ photography. Sella’s attention is focused more on the beauty and power of nature. His images are very simply constructed, and his vision is breath taking. Sella’s photographs are all in black and white and in the main, represent the relationship between Man and Nature. The focus of his attention is the landscape, paying little attention to the figures. In his photographs the mountains dwarf the figures, suggesting to the viewer the monumentality of nature. The images consist of strong contrasts of black and white in which the small, dark images of figures are surrounded by snow of the purest white. Sella’s landscapes also appear not simply as physical spaces but metaphysical ones, reflecting the thoughts and emotions not only of the photographer but of the mountaineer as well. It is only a mountaineer that can bring us these remarkable photographs and it is evident that Sella was as good a mountaineer as he was a photographer. The artist’s use of black and white and the geometric arrangement of his compositions appear abstract and reveal a more subjective and modern vision as opposed to a pure documentary vision.
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Siniolchun from the left hand side of the Zemu Glacier, 1899 (telephotograph) Silver Gelatine print 396 x 297 mm from and 18 x 24 plate © 2008 fondazione Sella Biella |
It is clear that Sella had a deep curiosity about the natural world, and the photographs he took on his travels encompass not only the spectacular mountains but also the native flora and fauna as well as the people he encountered and their customs.
During his lifetime Vittorio Sella was highly acclaimed and his photographs were published and widely exhibited in the United States as well as Europe. His work was shown at the annual exhibition of the Alpine Club in London and his last solo exhibition took place in 1890 at the Royal Geographical Society, which the same year awarded him their prestigious Murchison prize in recognition of the photographs he took in the Caucasus. Sella is still well known among the mountaineering community and the Estorick Collection has allowed those of us who prefer terra firma the opportunity to witness some truly magnificent landscapes.
Copyright © Artyfacts 2008
