Vittorio Sella

[h2oman]

I recently received a copy of the book Summit, of photographs by the mountaineer Vitorrio Sella. Many of his images were made on 30cm by 40cm glass plates, and they are quite beautiful, and least if you appreciate that sort of thing. There are several panoramas created by stitching up to 6 images together the old-fashioned way, and the edges match up quite well. For those who enjoy landscape photography, I can't recommend this book enough.

For something similar, try Mountain Photography by Bradford Washburn. The reproductions in both books are excellent, in my opinion.

I have a few photographs by these two, as well as some of my own, in the most recent blog post at my web page.

[Tin Can]

https://www.fondazionesella.org/photo-funds/sella-vittorio-5/

[Drew Wiley]

Both those books are among my favorites. Sella once got that glass plate camera at high as 23,000 ft on Chogolisa in the Karakoram. But one of his famous stitched panoramas of the Baltoro Glacier in what is now Pakistan which had a string of roped climbers in the middle distance turned out to be a composite! It was recently discovered that there were no climbers on the original neg, but that those were dubbed in from a different negative taken in the Alps. They look tiny in the Baltoro scene, but if true scale, they would have been about 18 ft tall apiece.

Another favorite mountain photographer of mine is Yoshikazu Shirakawa, who, like Washburn, did a lot of aerial shots, but in a dramatically different signature style. He has his own dedicated museum in Japan, as does Shiro Shirahata, who did his own Himalayan and Karakoram work land-based entirely in color with a 4X5 Linhof Technika. Both these men had highly funded multiple expeditions with lots of people involved. I finally acquired a copy of Shirahata's Nepal Himalaya book - not as artistic as Shirakawa - but I just wanted to see the documentation of all those magnificent glaciers which are already receding.

Gosh knows where all my own mtn prints will end up, but those are all from here in the Western US. It's been a healthy lifestyle; but old age eventually catches up with us all.

[Greg Y]

The Vittorio Sella exhibition at the Whyte Museum in Banff in 1999 is hands down the very best photo exhibition i've ever seen, (only the Bradford Washburn exhibition also at the Whyte with both Bradford & Barbara present comes close). The Sella collection does not travel out of Italy very often and seeing the big prints is magical. He was a remarkable man. The biography of the Duke of Abruzzi is a good read with photos and lots of mention of Vittorio Sella.

(https://www.amazon.ca/Duke-Abruzzi-Explorers-Life-Legends-ebook/dp/B00M36180A/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2EQO9DK2TIN8J&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.cd4vni-vThV6DOzp3aWZaZHRcev83NnUX_Qz8mQU6b9pWo-k88k1K_8mcFulE5U5XiTV0rBMsYum7w-IgYDzPSXIM4E770aGayFkhLIw4ByhVEZ0Nm3ZXbkAde0YAXmJ.IPP8fsX4rFSAkojXachfSeEZD3r2MnO5j8EEuysdBE4&dib_tag=se&keywords=duke+of+abruzzi+biography&qid=1713983845&sprefix=duke+of+abruzzi+biography%2Caps%2C120&sr=8-2

Neither the photos of Yoshikazu Shirakawa nor Shiro Shirahata have the same effect on me. I had the privilege to guide S. Shirahata in the Canadian Rockies, to photograph Mt Bryce and Mt Alberta. He had a university-age mountaineering club student as a porter and a japanese translator friend of mine along as well. Fording the Sunwapta River on the way to Wooley shoulder without getting his camera gear wet was the crux. SS was a very taciturn man and would sit quietly, waiting for hours before he exposed the first sheet of film.
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[Mark J]

Thanks for the link.
I would love to see some of Sella's real prints.
Was there enough sensitivity outside of the blue in the plates by 1900 that you could employ a yellow filter ? I see some tone in the skies.


I have the big books on the Himalaya by Shirahata and Shirakawa - found for me by a bookshop on Charing Cross road many years ago.
Washburn, I knew about from the one shot in Bill Brandt's book 'The Land'. I subsequently bought that 1961 shot as a print from Bradford when he was selling through a gallery in Boston, and I wish I'd bought at least one more of his Alaskan work.

[Greg Y]

I always loved this Washburn photo of the Doldenhorn in the Swiss Alps, but at the time when Bradford Washburn was still alive the silver gelatin print was $500.( a lot of cash for someone with a young family. But there is an original of the photo hanging in the CMH Bugaboo Lodge where i worked)... Bradford Washburn also led a very adventurous life, starting as a teenager climbing serious routes in the French Alps in 1929 (!) with now-famous guides. He wrote a "boys" book titled "Among the Alps with Bradford." https://www.amazon.com/s?k=among+the+alps+w+bradford&crid=1FPU860IYQA29&sprefix=among+the+alps+w+bradford%2Caps%2C125&ref=nb_sb_noss
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[Drew Wiley]

Oh, that's one of my favorites too. ... but not as posted on the web .... It looks like there is a massive toothed piranha-ogre face on the glacier below, about to devour them! I never noticed that in the book reproduction. Now I've probably ruined it for everyone, pointing that out.

Greg - It's sure interesting you had a chance to guide Shirahata. I didn't bother buying his Rockies book. I like my own Rockies pictures a lot more, especially since they're mainly in black and white. Both of those Japanese photographers have now passed away. Shirakawa's Linhof aerial shots of the K2 area were apparently published only in German; perhaps Linhof was one of his sponsors on that project. All the other aerials - North America, Himalayas, and Alps, were taken with Pentax 6x7 gear, and those books are much more common. Gutsy gritty shots in Shirakawa's case. Some of the Alps color shots are conspicuously color filter altered. But those two men weren't lifetime printmakers.

Washburn, however, was a serious technician, and had access to high-end equipment. If you compare his largest prints to AA's from the same era, the Washburn ones are far better detailed.

Whymper was of course the first to climb the Matterhorn; but Sella was the first to traverse it. A classic book I liked reading was Rebuffat's "Starlight and Storm'; I think he was the first to climb the N. Face of the Matterhorn. But I'm sure glad the US didn't adopt the pattern of the European Alps with rotating restaurants atop summits, linked by trams, and train tunnels through classic peaks. And thank goodness Disney never turned Mineral King into a ski resort. I don't know if the road into there will even be open this year yet due to last winter's avalanches.

Sella was more the pioneer, both in mountaineering and with a camera. Shirakawa went though quite a bit of weather misery to find the tripod spot of Sella's famous Jannu shot, and to replicate the same light with both color and IR b&w film, in a deliberate homage to Sella. Now there's a darn trekking company hut atop that pass, or at least a nearby location!

Mark - No filters; clouds in skies were often dubbed in during printing back in blue sensitive plate days. Sella did that kind of thing as precisely as one would expect from Uelsmann. But mainly, he just left things alone, yet still managed to get a compelling sense of shimmering ice and grand atmosphere. Yep, one of the best ever; and he never read a single line of AA's 3-volume how-to series.

[Greg Y]

DW, The Schmid brothers did the first ascent of the Matterhorn N Face in 1931 (Rebuffat was 10 yrs old).
The adventures of the Duke of Abruzzi and Vittorio Sella are legendary. The Duke of Abruzzi was a professional military man and in fact the commander in chief of the Italian Navy during WW1. If there were ever two men I'd have liked to have dinner with it's got to be D of Abruzzi & V Sella!
V Sella did the first winter ascent of the Matterhorn and the first winter traverse of Mont Blanc.

[Mark J]

That's a stupidly-doctored version of Washburn's Doldenhorn shot. I just checked around the corner in the living room - for starters it's a landscape format ! ( & no piranha present )
The print quality on the real one is as good as it gets, it's the standard I aspire to. My print is an 11x14" shot from a 9x7" original, I believe.

What size was Sella taking ?

Fascinating info on this thread, btw.

[Greg Y]

Yes the Doldenhorn photo is spectacular & the Washburn prints were superb....before his son-in-law ? took over and made a separate business of it. The one i'm familiar with was a 1999 (circa) print. Sella was using 11"x14" cameras....& you likely know, processing on site wherever he was in a darkroom tent!
I can't exactly remember the exhibition print sizes but they were enlargements and the famous Baltoro glacier panorama photo was breath taking!
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* framing more like this one
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[Oren Grad]

Tony Decaneas, who founded the Panopticon Lab and Panopticon Gallery in Boston, was also the exclusive agent for the Bradford Washburn estate, and the North/South America agent for Vittorio Sella. I remember seeing Brad Washburn's work as part of shows at the Panopticon Gallery, and Brad himself at photography-related events around Boston during his later years.

https://decaneasarchive.com/about/

[Drew Wiley]

Yes, that's more the composition I'm familiar with in the Washburn shot, devoid of the piranha look.

I think both Sella's camera and the backpack frame which carried it are still preserved in his museum in Italy. A lot of the plates from the Mt St Elias expedition were lost due to the moisture and a spill accident. It's amazing that the Duke of Abruzzi had brass beds hauled by sled on that expedition so they could sleep good at night! I wonder if they had fresh pizza delivered by dogsled too. On all my own "expeditions", I'm the one who hauls everything needed by myself.

[Greg Y]

When I first saw Vittorio Sella's photographs, I heard 'he was the Duke of Abruzzi's photographer'...if you read the biography
https://www.mountaineers.org/books/books/the-duke-of-the-abruzzi-an-explorers-life (it is very worthwhile). You'll see that the Duke lived an exceptional life... in a short 60 years.
Just to whet your appetite. His mother died when the Duke was 3, and he was sent to sea as a cabin boy at age 6. As a career sailer, he sailed the world's oceans. In 1889 he was mid-shipman on the Amerigo Vespucci. And in WW1 Commander -in-chief of the Italian navy.
Without Sella, only the most avid adventurers would know about the exploits of the Duke of Abruzzi. Without Abruzzi, the scope of Sella's work would not possibly have been so broad.
They were an ideal pair. Consider, that the Duke of Abruzzi's adventures that we read about all took place when he wasn't sailing on a wooden hulled schooner.
This summary of the Duke of Abruzzi's life "Prince of Climbers" is exhaustive if you don't read the biography
https://www.vqronline.org/essay/prince-climbers

[Drew Wiley]

Glad to see the biography included their exploration of the peaks of the Ruwenzori in central Africa. Chogolisa (Bride Peak) in Pakistan was where one of my nephew's climbing partners, John Climaco, was kidnapped about 25 years ago, ironically, by his own Govt liaison officer, not the Taliban. He published a book about the ordeal called Dangerous Liaisons. At the time, my nephew was over the crest to the north, exploring the Chinese side of K2 with Kurt Diemberger, the living legend who first climbed Broad Peak next to K2, and was the oldest person to ever climb K2 itself (and the sole survivor of that infamous episode).

The alternate name for Chogolisa, Bride Peak, is due to the almost complete white nature of the Peak, almost like in a wedding dress. Shirahata got some excellent Fujichrome shots of it with his Linhof. It's the shape of a gigantic tent, but dangerous enough to have taken the life of another climbing legend, Herman Buel. Diemberger was with him at the time, but then lost sight of him in the mist; and no one ever saw Buel again. Dangerous work. But factor in the conditions back when Sella was photographing the Baltoro Glacier, with a regiment of Gurkha soldiers out of India pursuing them at the same time, and it must have been quite an "interesting" trip.

That top of the world, or "Third Pole" is now under fierce territorial contention between India, Pakistan, and China, all hoping to control the glaciers which represent the source of some of the world's greatest rivers - more important than ever as these water resources are diminishing.
Most of the soldiers sent up there die from altitude sickness, not actual enemy activity. The Chinese have actually plowed a road to the foot of the glacier on their side, and built a small military base there - amazing, given the sheer remoteness, and the fact that the first time in history that valley was ever explored was less than three decades ago when Diemberger's expedition, including my nephew, was there.

[h2oman]

Tony Decaneas, who founded the Panopticon Lab and Panopticon Gallery in Boston, was also the exclusive agent for the Bradford Washburn estate, and the North/South America agent for Vittorio Sella. I remember seeing Brad Washburn's work as part of shows at the Panopticon Gallery, and Brad himself at photography-related events around Boston during his later years.

https://decaneasarchive.com/about/

Thanks for the link. #6364 from the Grand Canyon set is a wonderful landscape abstract!