VITTORIO SELLA. Breche de la Meije, c. 1879-1892, Sella number AI 501. 11.3x15.4" collodion print, printed c. 1893, mounted on 12x15.9" brown board. Inscribed in ink on mount recto: Alps / 501 Breche de la Meije, etc. / AI; inscribed in pencil: 501. Print recto embossed with artist's credit stamp in bottom right corner. Inscribed in pencil on mount verso: Loan 27 / [illegible]; stamped in black ink: Depose / Tous Droits Reserves / V. Sella - Biella.

Breche de la Mejia is 3,300 m 10,827 ft.

Vittorio Sella (1859-1943) was the leading large-format mountaineering photographer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, renowned for his spectacular high-altitude photographs of glacial floes, peaks, and valleys. Sella traveled the world, photographing in the European Alps, the Caucasus, Mt. Saint Elias (Alaska Yukon Border), and the Himalayan Sikkim. In the early 1900s he photographed mountains in the Africa Ruwanzari and the Himalayan Karakoram.
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 nineteenth 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 which 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.

Very Good: Moderate wear, some dirt, dent in middle R edge of print. Mount is fragile with tears, missing pieces, marks and dirt.