Have you ever stopped to think about just how moving it can be to gaze at the horizon? In our collective imagination, sitting by the sea or in the middle of a meadow and losing yourself in that distant line stretching across the landscape is inseparable from a sense of freedom. And really, how could anyone disagree? You can’t… but I want to tell you about this panoramic photograph by Red: the horizon we see every day.
This photograph was taken at dawn one morning, and for once I can say that I was there too, in that exact place, at that exact moment. I saw this spectacle with my own eyes, and I can assure you, it was breathtaking.
That morning was the Mezzalama, the ski-mountaineering race in which, as I’ve already told you, a group of almost superhuman athletes cover around forty kilometres through cold, snow and ice, roped together, with their skis sometimes on their feet and sometimes on their backs, climbing more metres of elevation than I can even remember. We woke up at around four that morning to film and photograph the start. Red, of course, was taking pictures while I complained about the cold, but that’s another story. Anyway, somewhere between one frozen finger and the next, we made it up to Plan Maison, at over 2,500 metres.
The emotion was stronger than the cold.
Despite all the people who had come up to watch the race and follow the athletes, I remember one moment of almost surreal silence. For the first time, after all the years I had been coming to Cervinia, I truly stopped and looked at the landscape.
The light was incredible. A light that settled over the peaks and caressed them, lending them a kind of softness. Somehow, it softened the sharp edges of mountains that are, by their very nature, rugged and unforgiving. And yet, although everything looked perfect to me, Red didn’t take the photograph straight away. He insisted that he had to wait for exactly the right moment. He was “tense” because a moment earlier the image would have been too dark, while a moment later there would have been too much light and he would have lost that enchanted effect. Then, in a second, there it was. CLICK. He took the shot. He’s the artist, obviously—I simply listen and go along with whatever he says—but I have to admit, he caught that perfect fraction of a second.
When I look at this photograph, beyond its sheer beauty, I am taken straight back to the feeling of that morning. It is incredible how powerful a photograph can be, how it can awaken emotions tied to memories you thought you had left behind in some distant corner of your mind, only for them to suddenly rise to the surface with a single glance. They overwhelm you. When I look at this image, I can hear the silence of that moment again. I can feel the cold air against my face, and I can feel my heart skip a beat with emotion.
Photography is this too, and I will never stop saying it. It is the memory of a moment.
A mountain is a line, a drawing traced by the Earth, taking away a piece of the sky you might otherwise have been able to see. But if there is a part of the sky hidden from your view, it is only because the Earth is giving you something even more magical to fill your eyes with.
