Don’t be misled by the prosaic title of this book. The Matterhorn is hardly “just a mountain.” Straddling the border between Switzerland and Italy, the Matterhorn may not be the world’s tallest pinnacle, but it’s arguably the most dramatic, its almost perfect pyramidal shape offering four distinct faces to the world. The British art critic John Ruskin called it “the most noble cliff in Europe.”
Nearly as awe-inspiring are the images that Croatian photographer Nenad Saljic has made of the Hornli Ridge, which connects the East and North faces of this fabled peak. A mountaineer in his youth, Saljic utilized time exposures to capture the sweeping movement of clouds and the streaking paths of stars in images of infinite variety and fascination. His photographs graphically invoke the Matterhorn’s mystique and majesty, as well as its menace—some 500 climbers have died trying to summit it—while seemingly evoking its past, present and future.
By Dean Brierly
Black & White Magazine, Issue 112, Dec 2015, USA