Weighed down by heavy, nineteenth-century camera equipment, Vittorio Sella climbed some of the world's most mysterious, perilous peaks and photographed them, many for the first time. His strikingly elegant photographs, which in Ansel Adams's words, "revealed [the mountains] in all their sheer majesty," established groundbreaking scientific and documentary information as well. Climbers today still use Sella's pictures to map out routes and to better comprehend the challenges in store.

Through Sella's images, we witness the grandeur of the Alps, the Caucasus, the Saint Elias Range in Alaska, the Ruwenzori in Africa, and the Himalayas. Sella's portfolio of K2 in the western Himalayas is the definitive photographic study of this mountain, considered to be the world's most difficult and dangerous to climb. His dazzling photographic documentation of these mountains had no predecessors and has few, if any, successors.

FOREWORD  BY DAVID BROWER

VITTORIO SELLA  BY ANSEL ADAMS

UNDER THE INFLUENCE: VITTORIO SELLA AND THE THIRD

GENERATION OF MOUNTAINEERS BY GREG CHILD

CHAPTER 1: THE ALPS, 1879-1895 BY PAUL KALLMES

CHAPTER 2: THE CAUCASUS, RUSSIA, 1889, 1890, 1896 BY PAUL KALLMES

CHAPTER 3: MOUNT SAINT ELIAS, ALASKA, 1897 BY PAUL KALMENTS

CHAPTER 4: KANGCHENJUNGA, SIKKIM, AND NEPAL, 1899 BY PAUL KALLMES

CHAPTER 5: RUWENZORI, UGANDA, 1906  BY PAUL KALLMES

CHAPTER 6: KARAKORAM, WESTERN HIMALAYAS, 1909 BY PAUL KALLMES

PICTURING THE SUBLIME: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF VITTORIO SELLA BY WENDY M. WATSON

NOTES

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

TIMELINE: THE LIFE OF VITTORIO SELLA

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS