VITTORIO SELLA. Bride Peak and Godwin-Austen Glacier from Camp III,1909, Sella number HK 163. 11.4x15.3" gelatin silver print, printed c. 1909, mounted on 14x18" heavy gray board. Embossed with Vittorio Sella stamp in lower right of print. Embossed with Vittorio Sella stamp in lower right of print. Inscribed in pencil on mount verso: 163 Staircase Peak and the end of the northern edge of K2 / 16 Loan / HK 163 /Kara

Staircase Peak and end of N.E. Ridge of K2 and the opening of the Staircase Basin p. 263

Skuang Kangri/Staircase Peak 7,545 m 24,754 ft. is the 44th highest mountain and it straddles the Pakistan-China border

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 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.

Excellent, edge wear corner wear, mount has missing corners and corner wear, mount verso has tape residue.