VITTORIO SELLA. Mt. Saint Elias Range from Malaspina Glacier- south of the Seward's icefall above the Malaspina Glacier. 9 Sept 1897. 108: Chaix Hills, Samovar Hills, Mt. Huxley, Mt. Saint Elias, Mt. Newton, Matasona, Augusta, Hitchcock Range, Mt. Cook., 1897, Sella number E 108-111, 10.8x51" 4 collodion prints, printed 1898, mounted on 12.7x64.2" heavy brown board. Embossed with Vittorio Sella stamp in lower right of right print. Inscribed in black ink above print with corresponding numbers in black ink on print: 1. Chaix Hills / + Great medial morraine of the Malaspina Glacier / 2. Agassiz Glacier / 3. Samovar Hills / 4. Mt. Huxley / 5. S. Elias / 6. M. Newton / a. Cascade gl. / 7. Augusta / b. Augusta gl. / c. Corwin cliffs / Pinnacle Pass [arrow pointing right]. Inscribed in black ink on mount below right image: from the left side of the Seward Glacier near its mouth / above the Malaspina glacier - Vittorio Sella.

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 African 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.

Sella worked in all four seasons and under the most difficult circumstances, documenting the highest regions of the earth with extraordinary artistry. 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."

His groundbreaking works of art from the Alps, the Caucasus, Africa, Alaska, and the Himalayas influenced Victorian aesthetics, and furthered scientific studies in the fields of anthropology, cartography, meteorology, and botany, and currently are used extensively in studies of glacial retreat.

Prints Very Good. Edge wear, marks, abrasions, prints lifting where prints meet, mount has waves, edge wear corner wear, dirt and is fragile.