THERE are some images that can only be captured by someone with a personal, and borderline spiritual, understanding of a location. Swiss photographer Nenad Saljic’s new book contains perhaps one of the best recent examples of this. Within its pages there are a variety of ‘portraits’ of a single location: Switzerland’s famous (and at times infamous) Alpine mountain, the Matterhorn. Nenad trained as a mountaineer and caver in his youth, and it was these experiences that caused him to fall deeply in love with, as he terms it, ‘nature’s most ancient textures, forms and shapes’. In this volume we find a visual document of Nenad’s love affair with the Matterhorn. Each image shows the vast formation under a variety of weather conditions – mist, storm, sun and rain. A pure overwhelming beauty suffuses every image. Matterhorn is an incredible and perfect encapsulation of the sublime. ★★★★★

By Oliver Atwell
The latest and best books from the world of photography
July 18, 2015

Nenad Šaljić
MATTERHORN
Portrait of a Mountain \ Porträt eines Berges

ISBN 978-3-033-05067-9
English\German
Hardcover\30×30 cm\120 pages
43 Black & White Duotone Photographs
Publisher: Orada & Galerie Rigassi Bern, Switzerland
Book Release Date: 25 June 2015
Price: 96.00 CHF
(65.00£\92.00€\102.00$)

BUY NOW

Published in conjunction with the exhibition:
NENAD ŠALJIĆ.MATTERHORN:
Portrait of a Myth \ Der Mythos im Porträt

25 June – 8 August 2015
CH-3011 Bern, Münstergasse 62
T +41 (0) 31 311 69 64
[email protected]

10 July – 10 October 2015
CH-3920 Zermatt, Riedweg 156
T +41 (0) 27 968 12 12
[email protected]

Sieben Künstler – ein Berg \ Seven Artists – One Mountain
KUNSTRÄUME ZERMATT
10 July – 30 November 2015
CH-3920 Zermatt, Hofmattstrasse 4
T +41 (0) 27 967 71 77
[email protected]

 

PDN Photo Annual, New York, 2015:

MATTERHORN: Portrait of a Mountain
Winner – Personal Category

… In order to understand the significance of the award-wining series of works by Nenad Saljic, in both an international as well as local context, we need to delve deeper into the history of photography itself, and landscape photography in particular, as its own autonomous genre. Landscape photography, which is at the center of the author’s work, stands out among other genres in photography precisely because it does not capture a moment in time or the fleeting nature of objects, which is characteristic of the medium as a whole, particularly for journalistic or life photography. Landscape photography, in complete contrast to those genres, doesn’t capture a moment, but rather the persistence and stability of a geological timeframe, which routinely transcends time for both the observer, and the photographer. It is by virtue of their convergence that many questions arise, which also transcend the common themes of photography, and introduce wholly new concepts for perception and analysis, the psychological and metaphysical concepts in defining time, and the concept of lasting and temporality. This is also true of the geocosmic time present in the photographs of Nenad Saljic, which routinely showcases not only stars or massive rock formations, but also temporal weather conditions.

Landscapes such as this, once photographed, have an almost therapeutic effect upon the observer. For those of us who’ve not physically scaled mountains, particularly not at night, these photographs offer the opportunity of photographically facilitated meditation in nature, at a somewhat lesser, and thus less intimidating, scale, as well as an experience devoid of the physical and climatic hardships that the author might have encountered.

… Namely, landscape photography doesn’t portray just the landscape itself; rather, as can be seen in Saljic’s work, it also includes the complex relationship between author and object. The author faces objects of remarkable longevity, as would an observer, which allows him to reevaluate his own importance and temporality. The impact of such emotions is often visible on the photographs themselves, and we encounter melancholic and dour, calming, terrifying or even enticing landscapes. These landscapes clearly appear as subjects in their momentary interaction with the photographer, i.e. the observer. The author faces them alone, in evident silence, often at night… seemingly without fear.

… Judging from the photographs of Nenad Saljic, who follows the ways of past photographers by going on expeditions to far and foreign mountain spaces, in which he mostly works at night, in a world of ecocataclysm, the relationship between man and landscape remains, in a way, an unchangeable form of communication, a place of contemplation and communication. The poetic and mystical, far and frightening, changing and simultaneously lasting mountain massifs in these photographs communicate precisely that warning which they communicated several hundred years ago, of the transient nature of man, while simultaneously being critical of civilization itself, which, while not portrayed in the photographs themselves, becomes a background motif for them.

Ana Peraica, Ph. D.
Fotografija, No 60-61, 2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia

New York Photo Festival – The PhotoWorld 2014 exhibition opening reception will take place at The POWERHOUSE Arena Friday, September 26, from 6-8 pm, on the opening day of the world famous Dumbo Arts Festival (@DUMBOArtsFest, #DAF14). The exhibition will be in view through November 10.