Journey through Time

I was at the foot of the Monte Rosa massif when I took this wonderful panorama of the Valais Alps. At the end of summer, heavy precipitation was forecast. But in the mountains, nothing is ever certain. Forecasts change rapidly and snowfalls are sometimes very localized. In this black and white photograph, some summits have been heavily bleached, while others are barely covered in snow. I climbed up to the Monte Rosa hut several times, in the feverish hope of capturing the most beautiful mountains in the Alps freshly adorned in white. Unfortunately, nothing worked. Then, on the third day, as the sky cleared, nature finally revealed its absolute beauty. It was still dark and I could only guess at the splendor of the landscape. I fixed my camera on a tripod and, thanks to the longer exposure time, the mountains that weren't visible to the naked eye suddenly appeared in the shot. The image gave us a glimpse of the invisible, the very soul of summits , which had just emerged victorious from the storm.

The beauty of the photograph lies in the glacier that catches us in the foreground and carries us away to summit of the Imperial Crown at Zinal. This incredible turn adds depth to the work and guides our gaze towards the famous Matterhorn, the The Dent d'HérensDent Blanche andObergabelhorn, which dominate the horizon. The soft contrasts provided by the night light highlight the grandeur of the mountain and the purity of the snow sprinkled on summits.

See this fabulous sea of clouds sailing between the summits. The mist clings above the moraine, which once marked the maximum height of the glaciers. Now they appear, much thinner and more fragile, only several hundred meters below. The panoramic photograph thus highlights the speed with which the high mountains are irrevocably changing. It confronts two faces of a nature that global warming has totally transformed. In the same picture, we admire its present beauty and dream of how it looked a hundred years ago. A moving testimony to a mutilated nature that, with a sigh of mist, offers us a glimpse of its flourishing past. What a moving journey through time.