Totem pole

• Simon Carter’s stunning forthcoming collection of photographs, The Art of Climbing (2024), illustrates the heights reached by this mutually supportive partnership.
• They beautifully capture breathtaking feats of strength and agility made possible by some of the world’s most extraordinary geological formations.
• As a recognisable leisure pursuit, recreational rock-climbing began in the late 18th century as part of the wider development of mountaineering.

• He founded a four-generation dynasty of photographic climbers based in Chamonix, France, at the mountain’s base.
• This family’s work illustrates the extraordinary development of climbing photography across the ages.

Global climbing photography

In the second half of the 19th century, photographs became more important for climbing.

• The Alpine Journal, the publication of the world’s first climbing club founded in 1857, reproduced its first mountaineering photograph in 1865.
• Later the same decade, they published guidance for aspiring climbing photographers in the article Notes on Photography in the High Alps.
• The climbers, authors and photographers George and Ashley Abraham were particularly important in the development of the kind of sports-climbing photography featured in Carter’s new book.

• The careers of two of the most highly regarded mountaineering photographers of this period reveal how climbing was becoming increasingly global, moving beyond “the playground of Europe” (the mountaineer Leslie Stephen’s term for the Alps).
• During their trip he produced some of the finest photographs of climbing in the world’s highest mountains.

Extreme climbing, extreme photography

• It is indicative of the close relation between photography and climbing, even in the most extreme locations, that one of the great mountaineering mysteries is the question of what happened to George Mallory’s and Andrew Irvine’s camera on their fatal attempt on Mount Everest in 1824.
• The Art of Climbing fully justifies the implicit claim of its title, revealing that photography has not only offered a spectacular record of achievement on rock but, as a form, has reached the elevated heights of art.

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Simon Bainbridge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.