A Photographic Anthology ~
W
e would like to thank Beat Perren for letting us reproduce here some images from the book he is bringing out to mark this year’s 150th anniversary. The pages of this magnificent piece of work really do celebrate the Matterhorn in all lights and from all angles. You get to witness the mountain across all representations of scale, from intricate detail on the rock face to full panorama. So you feel the vastness of the extraordinary landscape that surrounds Zermatt, the scree slopes, the glaciers and resolutely unforgiving rock-faces. But through his lens, Herr Perren allows you also to discover the very small. The tiniest cleft where the climber must use a finger to hold on. The intimacy of initials carved in stone, a record left by early climbers as they reached higher and higher up the mountain that was said to be impregnable. It’s not only his visuals that have such an intricate approach. Herr Perren also tells the story of the First Ascent in words, including the perspective from Italy. His wife Luisa is from the Aosta Valley and played an important role in creating the book. One of the most touching parts is the section that shows Luisa climbing the Matterhorn with Bruno Jelk, photographed all the way by her husband. But one challenge of such an expedition in front of the camera is Take Two. They had to make the climb twice. This master-piece would be a wonderful gift for any Zermatt fan and we think it’s a bargain at CHF 79. You can find it at all the bookshops in town and the International Pharmacy on the Bahnhofstrasse.