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These photographs by Italian alpinist-photographer Vittorio Sella are part the exhibition Summit: Vittorio Sella, Photographer and Mountaineer, which opens at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum January 29. (Top left) Crevasse on the Glacier Blanc, Alps, 1888; (top middle) Portrait of Vittorio Sella at Fifty in the Karakoram, 1909; (top right) Camp Below the West Face of K2, Karakoram,1909 . |
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Wendy Watson (left), Mount Holyoke College Art Museum curator, has organized an exhibition of original black and white images made between 1879 and 1909 by the acclaimed Italian alpinist-photographer Vittorio Sella. The show will open at the MHC art museum January 29. Watson coauthored an award-winning book, Summit, which will accompany the show. |
Toting weighty camera
equipment as high as 20,000 feet, the intrepid Sella managed to
fulfill a double passion for the perils of climbing and the thrill of
capturing the mystery of earth's most sublime geographies. Climbers
have used Sella's images to map out routes for over a century, and
alpine clubs have been among the primary archivists of his work.
Moving the world's mountains to Mount
Holyoke sounds like a task for Mohammed, but museum curator Wendy
Watson has more than met the challenge. Watson has organized a
dynamic exhibition of original black and white images made between
1879 and 1909 by the acclaimed Italian alpinist-photographer Vittorio
Sella, to open at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum January 29.
Summit
will formally open
with a gallery talk Friday, February 4, at 4:30 pm by Sella's
great-grandson, Lodovico Sella, director of the Fondazione Sella in
Biella, Italy. An opening reception will follow.
Internationally celebrated for his
high-altitude vision, the nineteenth-century innovator documented
summits across four continents, many for the first time. From the
Alps to craggy Ushba in the Caucasus, from majestic K2 in the western
Himalayas to the Ruwenzori in Africa, the photographs record with
scientific precision and aesthetic authority a world of strikingly
raw natural splendor.
Noted photographers such as Ansel
Adams hailed Sella as one of the great recorders of nature, a man
whose work inspired "religious awe." But the prolific pioneer's
reputation remained obscure for most of the public. Mount Holyoke's
exhibition, Summit:
Vittorio Sella, Photographer and Mountaineer, spotlights a photographer of "great
aesthetic and scientific importance," says Watson. She views the show
as the "rediscovery of a man of major influence in the tradition of
expeditionary photography," and believes his art deserves a firm
foothold in the wider canon of photographic imagery.
Watson, an expert in
nineteenth-century Italian photography, joined forces with
mountaineer Paul Kallmes to select 120 vintage photographs and
panoramas for the exhibition. Watson traveled to Italy to meet
Sella's descendants and to work in the archive there, which holds
more than 5,000 images captured during what was considered the golden
age of mountaineering. More recently, Watson and Kallmes coauthored
an award-winning book Summit (Aperture, NY) that will accompany the
show.
Kallmes first discovered Sella's work
while researching climbing routes at the Alpine Mountain Club in
Boston five years ago, and approached Watson with the hope of
bringing greater visibility to the unique photographer's vision.
"This was before [Jon Krakauer's bestseller] Into Thin Air was published," noted Watson, who
agrees that current interest in perilous climbing narratives,
including the Mallory story, will perhaps bring even greater currency
to the Sella show, which will travel to museums in New York City and
Banff, Canada.
Clearly transcending the
sensationalism of today's popular climbing books, however, Sella's
substantial body of work, which included ethnographic studies, stood
out even in his day, when, as Watson noted, "most nineteenth-century
Italian photographers focused on the cultural riches of Italy." In
Sella's era, notes Kallmes in Summit, mountain peaks were considered
barren, haunted wastelands. "Sella, more than any other
photographer," he writes, "must be credited with drawing the
mountains out from under an age-old shadow of superstition." Vittorio
Sella's work will undoubtedly expose viewers to the radiance of
earth's most remote and mysterious regions.
A lecture on Sella's work by Watson
and Kallmes will take place February 10. Other scheduled lectures are
"Into Thin Air: Mountaineering Then and Now," by Alan Durfee,
professor of mathematics, February 17; "Adventures, Spies, and
Scientists in the Himalayas," by Thomas Millette, associate professor
of geography, earth and environment, February 24: and "Eastward and
Upward: Romancing the Caucasus," by Stephen Jones, associate
professor of Russian and Eurasian studies, March 2. The exhibition
runs through March 10.
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