Spectacular mountain panoramas and views of glaciers, early refuges of the Swiss Alpine Club SAC as well as unique documents on photo alpinism and landscape change: Jules Beck (1825–1904) is one of the pioneers who ventured into the high mountains with crampons and a camera in order, as he said , “to conjure up the glamorous and uniquely beautiful Firn world down to the lowlands”. In 1867 he was the first to take photographs on the highest mountain in Switzerland, the Dufourspitze.

Jules Beck bequeathed his archive, which is unique in the history of photography, to the Alpine Museum of Switzerland (ALPS), which publishes this monograph about his life's work. With around 300 duplex photographs and detailed texts on Jules Beck's life and work by Urs Kneubühl, geographer and long-time director of the ALPS, and Markus Schürpf, photo historian. And with numerous original quotes from this pioneer of modern alpine photography.