2col 2. Cervino…

Vittorio Sella, “Cervino from Col d’Hérens, 26 July 1885,” sepia-toned silver gelatin print. ©2008 Fondazione Sella, Biella.

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FOR 6/6

‘FROZEN IN TIME’ WILL OPEN AT ESTORICK COLLECTION JUNE 25 w/1 cut

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LONDON — Pioneering mountaineer and photographer Vittorio Sella (1859–1943) recorded his journeys to the mountains of four continents in a series of spectacular images described by both climbers and photographers as one of the greatest mountain photographs ever made.

“Frozen in Time” is a selection of these works spanning three decades that will be exhibited at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, June 25–September 14.

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. His father had written the first Italian-language treatise on photography in 1856 and his uncle Quintino Sella, the statesman and, briefly, Italian Minister of Finance, founded the Italian Alpine Club.

Having undertaken such feats in the Alps as the first winter ascent of the Matterhorn in 1882 and the first winter traverse of Mont Blanc in 1888, Vittorio set out on the mountaineering and photographic adventures that 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; to the Karakoram and Western Himalayas in 1909; and to Morocco in 1925. In 1935 at the age of 76 he made his final attempt to climb the Matterhorn, abandoned only because of an accident which injured one of the guides.

Sella could not have captured the grandeur of the mountains in the way he did had he not been as skilled a mountaineer as he was a photographer. Photographs of great peaks taken from valleys below foreshorten them but by climbing an opposite mountain. Sella gives a true picture of their immensity and beauty.

Taking the pictures that make up his “Panorama of the Baltoro Glacier” in the Karakoram range on the borders between Pakistan, China and India, Sella and his porters carried his heavy Ross & Co camera to 17,330 feet.

Vittorio had a deep curiosity about the natural world and the photographs he took on his travels encompass not only the mountains but also the native flora and fauna, as well as the people he encountered and their customs.

In 1946, Ansel Adams, who was one of Sella’s greatest admirers, wrote a memorial tribute to him in the Sierra Club Bulletin: “The memory of Vittorio Sella is closely embraced by the moods of the world’s great mountains, many of which are known to us chiefly through the beautiful imagery of his lens.”

The exhibit comprises some 40 of Sella’s vintage photographs and multi-plate panoramas borrowed from the Fondazione Sella which owns the Sella Museum, established in 1948 at the laboratory in his home town of Biella.

The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art is at 39a Canonbury Square. Visit www.estorickcollection.com or call 44 (0)22 7704 9522 for information.