The conquest of distance (Extract from the book)

The alps are inhabited, admired, put to use. They are homeland, holiday destination, projection screen − sublime, explored, and cluttered. Every slope has been measured; every summit, conquered. And yet, we are always inventing new ways to see the alps. Once. And again, for time and time eternal.

… Hannibal, Goethe, Caspar David Friedrich (while never having set a foot in the alps). The English, E.T. Compton. The Magic Mountain. Spyri’s Heidi, the Mountains are Calling. The Modern, mass tourism, ecological initiatives: these are generally the parameters within which we move today, questioning how and why we observe, acknowledge, and value the alps as we do. They are indeed the posts between which – intended or not – the genre of alpine nature photography operates. Most of the images stiffen in their beauty and opulence; most resound in imagery that falls somewhere between that of Caspar David Friedrich and Luis Trenker. Yet, ways of approaching and perceiving the alps have been anything but static in recent history. Over the course of time, they have, in fact, altered radically …

192 Pages,
98 Photographs in Duotone
Texts by Jan Kirsten Biener & Peter Mathis
Published by PRESTEL
Design: Hannah Feldmeier