The mountain landscape is a field in which photography has truly been able to innovate, while being part of a pictorial, scientific and cultural tradition born in the 18th century . The representational force of photography transcribes the hieratic, pathetic, fascinating and solitary character of the high mountains. Aesthetically it attempts to restore the feeling of the sublime .



It was only in 1861 that the Bisson brothers and Joseph Tairraz took their first photographs in the Mont Blanc massif, an unprecedented feat, due to the extreme conditions and the perilous nature of the enterprise. The term “mountaineering” appeared in 1876, auguring another photographic approach, one which reflected the spirit of conquest and the surpassing of a mystical and spiritual vision of the mountain. The main landscape photographers of the 19th century were able to talentedly translate this new approach to the mountain. The cultural and aesthetic ensemble that they proposed also reflects the radical and sometimes brutal transformation of the Swiss landscape. Throughout the 20th century , the view of mountain photographers developed spectacularly; digital technology allows new approaches that have renewed the genre in a creative and original way.



Largely from the collections of the Musée de l'Élysée, two hundred photographs allow us to understand the directions in which mountain photography has developed (science, tourism, mountaineering, art) and the formal aspects used by photographers from 1840 to the present day (frontality, verticality, low angle for example).