작품 상세

VITTORIO SELLA. Panorama of Ruwenzori Group from King Edward Peak (Mt. Baker), 1906, Sella number R 117-125. 10.9x121.5" gelatin silver prints, 9 panels, c. 1907, on 13x122.5" heavy brown paper. This sale of lots from this auction will directly benefit the Appalachian Mountain Club White Mountain Trails, Research Department and the Club Archive. Sella's negatives ranged in size from the standard 30 x 40 cm. (11 x 15.5" app.), 12 x 20 cm, (8 x 10" app.), and 24 x 30 cm (9 x 12" app.). He also used stereoscopic and handheld Kodak cameras. By the time of the Turin exhibition, he was enlarging his prints. The most celebrated of his work were the multi-plate panoramas, which would comprise much of the AMC collection. Vittorio Sella lived during the Golden Age of European mountain exploration when many peaks were being scaled for the first time. Prior to his era, mountains were mostly regarded as dangerous obstacles to be crossed, haunted by evil spirits. The early 19th century saw a dramatic shift in people's perception of mountains, heralded by the Romantic poets who lauded them as "palaces of nature" that embodied the eternal. To Wordsworth and others of the Romantic era, alpine pinnacles became symbols of the heights to which the imagination of man could aspire, toward the unattainable goals of understanding infinity, eternity, and the vastness of God. It was no accident that the beginnings of mountaineering as a sport coincided with the recognition that mountains were, in fact, beautiful. And the development of photography coincided with that very moment in the history of natural philosophy that has been called the "era of moralized mountaineering". This ushered in a sudden interest in landscape and natural scenery, along with poetry, painting, photography, and the art of travel as people sought out the heightened emotions brought about by a full experience of Nature.