History of the Alps

The relationship between photography and the mountains goes back almost as far as the invention of the former: as early as 1844, the French government commissioned two scientists, Bravais and Martens, to investigate the possibility of photographing in hostile environments, and chose to send them to Chamonix. Joseph-Philibert Girault de Pranget (1804-1892) and John Ruskin (1819-1900) were pioneers in this respect, and the latter boasted of having taken the first photograph of the Matterhorn (or indeed of any mountain) in August 1849. But it also met with rapid success: the general public ...