Titlis

Once again, Walter Niedermayr has documented the traces of tourism engraved in the alpine landscape with the meticulous precision of the archeologist in this new book of photographs.

This selection of fourty medium-format color photographs by Walter Niedermayr, who was born in 1952 in Bolzano, transports us into the world of perpetual ice-to Mount Titlis, the glacier which rises proudly above the boundaries of space and time three thousand meters above sea level in the Swiss Alps. Only the human figures in colorful leisure attire which populate this seeming Shangri-la bear witness to the influence of civilization, transforming the alpine landscape-once the paradigm of an aesthetics of the sublime-into a trivial theme park governed by the laws of consumption.
Niedermayr’s camera captures the aura of a mountain landscape that has become a legend. The alpine setting in which the puppet-like figures of tourists appear are shaped by these clichés and bold idealizations of nature to such a great extent that subjective perception and feelings become mere platitudes.