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Summit---Vittorio Sella photographs


john_kasaian1

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Summit published by Aperture, celebrates the mountain LF Photography

of Vittorio Sella in the years 1879-1909. Sella's works feuled the

imaginations of the likes of Ansel Adams and Bradford Washburn so I

guess my imagination is in good company. Anyone familiar with this

book? Haunting mountain landscapes of the Alps, the Caucasus, the

Saint Elias Range, the Ruwenzori and the Himalayas. Accompanied by

informative essays that put a very real face on a pioneer LF mountain

photographer, its a book I found as inspirational as it is

beautiful. Many of Sella's expeditions were made as a "recording

photographer" for the Duke of Abruzzi, Luigi Amadeo di Savoia. The

logistics of LF photography with wet colloid glass plates and a

Kinnear 30x40cm camera puts my own LF logistics challenges into

perspective. For Sella, like Adams and Washburn, the subject

demanded nothing less than LF and the bigger the better. Anybody else

out there have a chance to peruse this one? Cheers!

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John, I have this book since about two years. One of the best landscape books I ever bought. Made me want to sign up for an extended trekking tour of the Himalayas with my camera right away - that camera being a 4x5 and with film instead of glass plates it should be childs play in comparison! I do think that the financial backing by the Duke and others (translate that into a sufficient number of porters) probably helped, but that was again offset by the different mountaineering equipment of the time.
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I have seen the book a few small times but have worked with the negatives of Sella and know Brad Washburn personally. Brad would come into the lab I worked at years ago and take rolls of his 10" roll film and want to look at it. Before I could turn on the light box he would throw the roll out on the floor. Both of their collections are amazing and (with a good amount of work) were a pleasure to print!!! Brad, I think, still goes to work everyday at the Museum of Science where he is on the board of directors in Boston. He would come to the lab for lunch on fridays and say he just had a little hike... turned out he hiked Mt Washington! He was a spry old guy and kept us all laughing!
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Some web sites:

http://www.comune.bolzano.it/wincity/32A9FF83_it.html

(Alpine pictures; Italian web site, also in German)

 

http://www.photomuseum.org.ge/sella/index_en.htm

(Caucasus pictures; From the Georgian (the country, not the state) museum)

 

http://www.emmet.de/por_sell.htm

(A few Karakorum pictures)

 

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0893818089.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

(the book cover page at Amazon, showing Siniolchun in the Himalayas)

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When I was researching my own trip to the Karakorum at the

library of the Royal Geographical Society in London, my friend left

me browsing through old expedition reports and maps in the

library to 'just pop upstairs' and ask the people in the Expedition

Advisory Centre a question. When he hadn't returned after nearly

forty minutes I went looking for him, finding him half way up the

staircase in front of a huge Sella print of the Mustagh Tower and

the Baltoro Glacier. He hadn't made it any further than that.

 

I'm not sure books can do Sella's big prints justice. His

photographs are much more 'straight' than Adams or even

Washburn, and don't have the drama of full zonie masterpieces.

The way that print on the staircase pulled you into itself with an

overwhelming sense of scale and detail is very hard to

reproduce in a book.

 

On the other hand, if you like mountain landscapes, it's hard to

find *any* good images of places like the Ruwenzori or the

Caucasus. Even the St. Elias Range tends to get second billing

among Alaska photographs. I haven't seen the book myself, but

I'll put it on my wish list.

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Struan,

 

I am aware of one other book on the Caucasus area Sella covered. Its in German, by a photographer named Wolfgang Korall, title is "Swanetien-Abschied von der Zeit" (roughly "Swanetia - farewell to time"), publisher Adam Kraft-Verlag, Würzburg 1991 ISBN 3-8083-2005-2.

It is in black and white, but 35mm, not large format and concentrates on the Swaneti people, their customs, and their archaic buildings. Still I consider it a very good book. Although the images are from the eighties, many pictures still look like Sella could have taken them.

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Thanks Arne. I speak German - albeit very badly these days - so

I'll see how generous the present fairies will be come my

birthday. I have some Russian (and Ukrainian, and Armenian..)

climbing friends and aquaintances who have wonderful slides of

that area, but I don't know of much that has been published. The

RGS expedition report collection is a fantastic primary resource,

but not really suitable for fireside drooling :-)

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