I have been wanting to write about this photograph by Red for some time, and today I finally found the inspiration to do it.
I love all of Red’s shots. They are his, they are ours, they belong to our Bottega. But it is also natural to have personal taste, so there are some images I love more than others.
This photograph, without a doubt, is in my top five.
There are so many details in it that I could spend hours looking at it.
The first time Red showed me this creation of his, my first thought was:
“It looks like a painting.”
Doesn’t it?
It has colours that almost seem to have been laid down by the hand of a hyperrealist painter. They feel soft, almost muffled. Perfect and defined in the lower part of the photograph, they gradually fade as the image rises towards the sky.
It is as if the Matterhorn were wrapped in a haze, in a halo that makes it even more mysterious.
I love how, at the base of the Matterhorn on the right-hand side of the photograph, the snow looks even and soft: a perfect veil on which skiers are free to move, descend and climb back up the slopes.
If you look carefully, you can see many tiny black dots beneath the ski-lift pylons. Little dots enjoying their day in the snow.
On the left-hand side, where the Furggen ridge is, the rock is harder, sharper, steeper, and the brown of the stone manages to emerge from beneath the snow.
But the part of this photograph that truly drives me mad is from the middle upwards.
Let me explain.
From the centre of the image, the Matterhorn begins to take shape. That day, despite the clouds, it did not hide.
Remember: I am not speaking to you as an expert on mountains. But what I can tell you is that I love this mountain in particular because it stands alone.
What I mean is that it rises clearly from the rest of the mountain range.
The Alps stretch for around 1,300 kilometres and are made up of many important peaks known all over the world. But the Matterhorn is the one with its own perfect, defined shape. It takes all the space it needs from the mountains around it in order to create its unmistakable silhouette.
If you ask a child to draw a mountain, they will draw it in the shape of the Matterhorn.
But let’s keep moving upwards through the photograph, so we can finally reach my favourite part.
The sky.
This sky can be interpreted in any way you like. There is light on the snow, so the sun is certainly finding its way through the clouds. But the sky itself is made of endless shades of grey, and the clouds are white, heavy with snow.
Look at them.
At the clouds.
At first, it almost seems as though the image is marked here and there, but it is not. Those are snowflakes captured by the lens. They sparkle and make the clouds shine.
They are tiny diamonds falling from the sky.
I love this photograph especially because the longer you look at it, the more details you begin to notice, details you would miss with a quick glance.
It is as if the sky wanted to offer its diamonds only to those who find the time to admire all its beauty.
