VITTORIO SELLA. Vincent Pyramide and Pisse Glacier (1572); Signalkuppe (Punta Gnifetti), Vigne Glacier and Loccie Pass. (1573) Panorama of Monte Rosa from the summit of the Fallerhorn, c. 1879-1892, Sella numbers AVII 1572, 1573. 16.4x38.7" silver prints (2 individual prints), printed c. 1893, mounted on 40.8x18.3" brown board.

1. Inscribed in ink on mount recto: Vincent Pyramide. Parrot's/ IL Monte Rosa dal Corno Di FaL[LER]; inscribed in pencil: 1572; Inscribed in ink on mount verso: Alps./ illegible/ No. 1572.
2. Inscribed in ink on mount recto: pitze. Punta Gnifetti./ ller alt. 3130 in Vallesesia./ Settembre 1892/ Vittorio Sella; Print recto embossed with artist's credit stamp in bottom right corner. Inscribed in pencil on mount verso: A VII 1572-1573/ Drawn arrow; Inscribed in ink: Alps.

This sale of lots from this auction will directly benefit the Appalachian Mountain Club Trails Protection Fund; Conservation Research and Climate Action; and the Modernization and Preservation of the AMC Library and Archives.

Ansel Adams paid tribute to Sella's greatness in a 1946 article for the Sierra Club Bulletin when he wrote, "with Sella's sensitive insight and response the magnificence of mountains is distilled into a high order of expression. Sella's photography was accomplished using orthochromatic plates which are sensitive to all colors of light except those of the red regions of the spectrum. Skies were rendered light gray, and foliage medium gray; atmospheric space was well recorded, and as there was little red in the general subject matter, "panchromatic" materials would have offered slight advantage. Color filters were undoubtedly used to reduce the values of the sky and to bring snow and clouds into vigorous relief."

By the early 1890s the idea that photographs could be artistic was commonplace, though most artists, including the young Alfred Stieglitz, held that they should be "painterly," soft-focused pictures representing nostalgic, sentimental and romantic qualities. Running parallel to this "pictorial" sensibility were the sharp focused views made by exploration photographers like Sella who was striving to capture geological and geographical verisimilitude through powerfully composed crisp pictures. By 1910 photographers like Stieglitz and Paul Strand began to shift away from pictorial imagery in favor of more documentary, unsentimental, hard edged pictures with a "modernist" sensibility, very like the pictures that Sella had been producing all along. Artistically, Sella was ahead of his time since he had an eye for the abstract masses of mountains, as well as the details of escarpments and glaciers.

Very Good: Wear and dirt on edges of print, abrasions, marks, prints lifted where panels meet, and spots. Mount has missing edges and corners and is fragile.