Carved by rock and ice: an artist’s journey to capture the essence of the Alps
To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the golden age of alpinism, on 30 June the artist Agnieszka Kozlowska is setting off on a traverse of the Alps. She will climb up to locations overlooking over 30 peaks ascended for the first time in that period (1854-1865) in the Swiss, Italian and French Alps. Using a so far unexplored photographic technique, for each summit she will produce a relief in a light-sensitive polymer plate exposed directly in-camera for several hours.
Agnieszka is an artist and researcher based in the UK and producing most of her work in the Alps. This project continues her investigation of the possibilities of a three dimensional photographic artefact communicating embodied experience of remote landscapes, in ways that go beyond purely visual apprehension of an image. Through an analogy between the mountainous environment sculpted out of rock by geological forces on one hand, and the action of light carving a relief in a photosensitive plate on the other, the technique used is intended to convey the solidity and spatial dimension of such a landscape as it is experienced by a walker physically immersed in it.
The Via Alpina has granted moral support to Agnieszka’s project.
www.kozlowska.eu
