Avalanche

Superb Lyskamm in the grip of the elements. This gigantic mountain in the Valais Alps is made up of two summits peaks over 4,000 metres high overlooking the Zermatt valley in Switzerland. Lined with hanging glaciers, it offers mountaineers a beautiful traverse of tapering ridges.

I took this photograph of Lyskamm in 2017. The snow has just fallen on the Valais highlands, and the first rays of sunlight illuminate the north face of this Alpine giant. A moment of purity suspended at the will of the elements. An increasingly rare testimony to a wilderness now heavily subjected to the consequences of climate disruption. Snow is giving way to rain and glaciers are irreversibly shrinking. That morning, I was admiring the beauty of Lyskamm when an avalanche struck. The implacable power of a nature that leaves no chance to those who underestimate it. Fortunately, the two mountaineers climbing to the Col du Lys (Lysjoch), tiny specks lost in the midst of this grandiose panorama, were at a higher altitude at the time of the fall and were therefore unharmed.

When I took this portrait of the mountain, I was at summit on the Gornergrat, accessible by tourist train from the Zermatt valley at an altitude of over 3,100 metres. I was surrounded by visitors, a restless and noisy crowd whose main preoccupation was taking selfies facing the mountain. When the avalanche started, I was the only one to photograph it. Suddenly noticing what a strange being I was, accompanied by my huge camera, telephoto lens fixed on summits, they realized the spectacle that had just unfolded before their blinded eyes. People are there, but they're not present... When I set out to meet the high mountains, I connect with them. I feel its vibrations, I listen to it, I'm attentive to its slightest movements. Like a wildlife photographer on the lookout for the slightest breath. In symbiosis with nature, so strong and fragile at the same time, the better to highlight it. This is how I feel alive, and how the mountains, when they agree to reveal their splendor to me, give my art its full meaning.