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Newsletter - Spring 2000
Interview

A Conversation with the Curators of the Sella Show

In the following interview, Marianne Doezema discusses the exhibition Vittorio Sella: Mountaineer and Photographer with co-curators Wendy Watson and Paul Kallmes.

MD: Paul, how did you come across Sella's photographs in the first place?

PK: I discovered a cache of photographs entirely by accident in the library of the Appalachian Mountain Club in Boston. My first thought was that they were fabulous images and should be taken care of. When I asked the librarian about them and why they weren't being preserved, the response was that there was no money and did I have any ideas? I said I had lots of ideas.

I had known about Sella as a mountaineer, but honestly, it wasn't the mountain pictures that captured my attention—it was that there were so many great people pictures. I can still remember some of these images vividly—for example, the one of the grandfather and his grandson sitting by the big stone wall, or one of the Lepcha porters in Sikkim. Seeing these, I realized that this man was much more than a mountaineering photographer.

I did some research and found very little information on Sella. I did run across a reference, in a 1948 publication, to a Sella museum in Biella, Italy; so I wrote to them. I also contacted several other individuals, among them Stephen Jones, professor in the Russian department at Mount Holyoke College. About a month later I received a telephone call from someone who introduced herself as Wendy Watson. She told me that Stephen Jones had just shown her some turn-of -the-century Italian photographs and she wanted to know more about them.

MD: Wendy, what was your reaction to seeing those photographs for the first time?

WW: Having worked extensively on 19th-century Italian photography, I was astonished to think that such a powerful body of work could have been produced by someone I had never heard of. Most Italian photographers of this period weren't looking outward but were chronicling the cultural heritage of Italy, the museums and archeological sites. Sella was quite unusual, going to the Caucasus, the Himalayas, Alaska, and Africa. So, it was understandable that I hadn't heard of him, but my curiosity was definitely piqued.

MD: So what is his place in the history of photography?

WW: On the mountaineering side, he falls into the tradition of the early mountaineering photographers, including the French Bisson brothers, who endeavored to do something they didn't know was even possible—to convey in a photograph what mountains really looked like and what the experience of mountaineering felt like.

PK: I believe Sella qualifies in some sense as a "Renaissance man," both as a photographer and a climber. He was a dedicated mountaineer—he risked his neck many times, to make photographs and to reach the summit. He wanted to bring back a straightforward rendering of the mountains, from what Ansel Adams called "the unmannered viewpoint."

MD: What about the people pictures?

PK: His descendant, Lodivico Sella, tells us that Vittorio spent so much time exploring the Alpine villages that he developed a real appreciation for the diversity of Alpine cultures. He admired these peoples for their ability to forge an existence in very challenging conditions.

WW: And that's where his family originated, too.

PK: Yes, it was in his blood. He paid close attention to the indigenous populations wherever he went. I believe that you can select 100 of Sella's best anthropological photographs and make a strong case for his abilities as an ethnographic photographer; you can take 100 of his best mountaineering photographs and do the same thing; likewise with his best landscapes.

MD: How did he learn to take such accomplished photographs in a all three of these areas?

PK: Having been reared in a privileged family, his upbringing was rigorous in intellectual discipline. We know he studied painting as a child, in addition to studying literature, history, calligraphy, and piano. In fact, he received a broad education in the humanities as well as the sciences.

WW: But there were no lay-abouts in the Sella family. Everyone was expected to achieve at a high level, to be well educated and to support themselves. His father wrote the first treatise in the Italian language on the chemistry of photography in 1859. And his uncle was a great statesman and mountain climber who was also founder of the Italian Alpine Club. So Sella put those two talents together and became a great mountaineering photographer.

MD: Tell me about what it must have been like to make these photographs.

PK: The technology was unimaginably cumbersome. His camera weighed about 25 pounds, and the negatives were kept in mahogany holders, with a plate on each side of it, so he was carrying more than 30 pounds of equipment. He would expose one of the plates and then turn the holder around to expose the other side. Then he would go into his tent and change the 13 x 16-inch plates in total darkness and put them in their sleeves, which must have been something like changing a window every time he wanted to take a picture. He carried these delicate, heavy plates all over the Alps and Himalayas.

WW: And every aspect of taking photographs at that time was so different from what photography is today. Now you can purchase everything from film to the chemicals used in the developing process. In Vittorio's era, photographers were developing their own techniques. In his laboratory, he would slide back part of the roof to allow sunlight to come through his enlarger, and through the glass plate negative to expose the sensitized paper underneath. On one wall, he had scrawled notations about how long to expose something in April as opposed to September.

MD: And with this incredibly cumbersome equipment and technology he produced exquisite photographs, such as Crevasse on the Glacier Blanc (shown at left).

WW: In that photograph, Sella caught that fabulous cloud rising above the horizon, which I'm certain he waited for. He was a master at arranging the elements within the frame of the picture and waiting for exactly the right moment to open the lens.

PK: For me this picture says a lot about the relationship between the known and the unknown. In 1888 glaciers were really not known, unlike today when we've all seen pictures of glaciers—when these four men were walking over the surface of this glacier, it was like walker on the moon. The glaciers provided some area of smoothness in an extremely chaotic environment punctuated by jagged peaks. And here in the middle of it all they are approaching this huge gaping hole. And the photographs capture their tentative approach to that abyss.

WW: When I look at the figure who is peering over the edge and see that pathetic rope, so unlike the ropes used by climbers today, the rope seems as much symbolic as it is practical.

PK: Yes, and I think they knew that. They were aware that they were together in this lunar landscape and whatever fate they met, they would meet it together.