1. VITTORIO SELLA. Lyskamm, Vincent Pyramide, Corno and Pass of Le Pisse, Indren Glacier, from Sasso del Camoscio (Gemsstein), 9,925 feet, c. 1879-1892, Sella number AVII 1577. 11.3x15.2" collodion print, printed c. 1893, mounted on 16 1/2x12 1/8" heavy brown board. Inscribed in ink on mount recto: 1577. Lyskamm, Vincent Pyramide, Corno and/ Pass of Le Pisse, Indren Glacier; Inscribed in pencil: 1577; Inscribed in blue pencil: A; Print recto embossed with artist's credit stamp in bottom right corner; Stamped in ink on mount verso: Depose / Tous Droits Reserves / V. Stella - Biella.

2. VITTORIO SELLA. Lyskamm from the Southeast, c. 1879-1892, Sella number AVII 1588. 11.1x15.1" collodion print, printed c. 1893, mounted on 17 1/4x13 5/8" heavy brown paper. Inscribed in ink on mount recto: Alps Lyskamm from the southeast; Print recto embossed with artist's credit stamp in bottom right corner; Inscribed in pencil on mount verso: A VII 160 bis/ 168/ VII 1588; Inscribed in red pencil: 1588; Paper label with red boarder attached to mount verso inscribed in ink: gift of/ Miss Anna H. Chase.

Two beautiful prints showing the sublime textures of the soft snow and hard rocks and peaks in powerful modern composition.

Lyskamm, also known as Silberbast, is a mountain (4,533 m (14,872 ft)) in the Pennine Alps lying on the border between Switzerland and Italy. Despite a prominence of well over 300 metres, Lyskamm is sometimes considered to be part of the extended Monte Rosa group (in fact the Dufourspitze is only 107 metres higher). But visually Lyskamm is a huge massif, composed of two summits: the Eastern Lyskamm and the lower Western Lyskamm, separated by a 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) long ridge, both lying on the border between the Swiss canton of Valais (north) and the Italian region of the Aosta Valley (south). The northern side of the mountain is an impressive 1,100 metres (3,600 ft) ice-covered wall, rising up from the Grenzgletscher. The gentler southern side rises only a few hundred metres above the glacier of the same name: Lysgletscher.

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.

Condition:
1. 1577 Very Good. Minor wear, edge and corner wear. Mount has edge and corner wear, missing corner, dirt and marks.
2. 1588 Excellent: Minor wear, edge and corner wear. Mount has edge and corner wear.