VITTORIO SELLA. Kangchenjunga at sunset, Path to Guicha La, 1899, Sella number HS 154. 6.6x9" collodion print, printed 1901, mounted on 10x12" heavy brown board. Embossed with Vittorio Sella stamp in lower right of print. Inscribed in black ink mount recto: Kangchinjunga at Sunset. Inscribed in pencil mount recto: 154 / HS 154.

The sublime and beautiful sunset on the third highest peak on planet Earth taken in 1899.

Sella lived in an era when geographical societies, exploration and mountaineering clubs, and mercantile (research) libraries proliferated in many towns and cities. The Sella family had helped found the Italian Alpine Club in 1863; a European equivalent of the AMC co-founded in 1876 by Charles E. Fay. The Alpine Club fraternity was a small, international network modeled after the first club of its type founded in London in 1857. Members corresponded with each other, sharing publications and information about guides, porters, and climbs in foreign lands. Such clubs provided scientific, ethnographic, and intellectual materials that were a valuable cultural asset for professionals and amateur enthusiasts alike. In their lecture's photographers, naturalists, explorers, and artists often used photographs and printed illustrations as a means of disseminating information about the latest artistic and scientific ventures.

During his lifetime Vittorio Sella was celebrated for the photographs he exhibited from his daring expeditions. According to one reviewer, his annual exhibition of mountain photographs at the Alpine Club in London was "inconveniently crowded." Sella sold his prints to people from Italy, France, Germany, and England, and was represented by a London dealer named Spooner. His photographs satisfied a growing public hunger to know more about distant places on the earth that few would ever see first-hand, while providing a satisfying blend of artistic, scientific, intellectual, and even spiritual elements. Sella's primary goal was to provide the empirical evidence of what he and his party had seen on their expeditions, and to convey reality as it was perceived by the human eye. His approach was governed by rigorous technical and aesthetic standards that he called "la realta severe" - severe reality.

Very Good: Minor wear, corner and edge wear, abrasions l side of print. Mount has corner and edge wear, dirt and marks. Mount recto has tape marks.