Rosenlaui is a Swiss glacier in the Bernese Alps. In 1850 it had an overall length of 6.14km. In 2010 it measured 5.15km; it has therefore lost over/more than 16% of its surface. It's climate change, it's global warming. Probably, by the end of the century, it will have disappeared forever.

 

Fernando Pessoa wrote that "Death is only a corner of the road, only never to be visited again." However, we know that everything continuously appears and disappears and that many of those don't have witnesses, don't generate amazement or regrets. How many have seen the Rosenlaui? How many would feel its absence? How many would see in the bare rock a wound, a blind spot in their gaze?

 

Kurt Ammann was only 13 years old with his first Leica in his hands in 1938 in Rosenlaui. The photographs he took while following a group of anti-avalanche Swiss are of stylistic perfection which is simply prodigious. The explosion of a natural talent for composition, timing and calibration of exposure in the most difficult conditions.

 

Also Kurt, like everything that surrounds us, came and went after a whole life dedicated to his sole great passion and also this "can no longer be seen/never to be seen again" and for many it's a wound, a loss. However, these "things", such as glaciers, mountains, waves, clouds and stars don't know they exist; they exist only in our gaze and sometimes our memories.

 

In 1960, when at his first Vincent Van Gogh exhibition, Kurt photographed only the faces of the public, the reactions to the paintings that could not be seen; they exist because somebody is observing them, in appreciation or in hate.

 

Also Kurt is always palpably in and behind each of his photographs. The subjects he he portrays are as if they had no self. The true subject, the feeling that warns us and commands his kindness is discreet but extremely complicit in bringing us closer to the world of things that constantly appear and disappear, to try to hold onto them for a while, at least a little while and in the "spasm of the shutter," will never forget.

 

Michele Alassio-Art Director Venicephotography, September 2023

Venice Photography is the only place in Venice where you can buy limited and numbered edition of photographic originals and posters of the protagonists of contemporary and vintage photography. With the artistic direction of Michele Alassio you can visit exhibitions relating to the permanent collection but also dedicated to individual authors and purchase original photographs of the greatest masters of contemporary photography. The space was born from the collaboration between Michele Alassio, internationally renowned photographer and Roberto Berné, Fine-Art printer of the greatest masters of contemporary photography.