Reservate des Augenblicks / Momentary Resorts

Walter Niedermayr
Reservate des Augenblicks / Momentary Resorts

Photographs: Walter Niedermayr

Text: Sigrid Hauser, Francesco Bonami & Guy Tortosa

Publisher: Hatje Cantz

113 pages

Year: 1998

Comments: Hardcover under dust jacket, 290 x 350 mm. First edition, 1998. Text in english and in german. In very good condition. Included in The Photobook by Parr & Badger, vol. II, p. 280.

"Tram stations, ski runs and panoramic terraces - the Alps are a playground for winter sports fans and enthusiastic mountain climbers: a populated Alpine leisure park. In his tableaux from close-up photos Walter Niedermayr documents the effects of Alpine tourism on the mountain world. But his pictures on the 'injuries' to the landscape are by no means pure photographic depictions of reality; he works in a subtle way with minimal changes of angle and viewpoint, and uses scarcely perceptible alterations to combine individual pictures into disturbing photo arrangements, achieving an intensity of seeing. At the same time, Niedermayr's artistic, photographic eye captures the traces of the Alpine leisure industry as aesthetic signs and lines in the landscape. The moments of tension in his photos emerge not least from the individualistic ambivalence between the beautiful appearance of the composition and the knowledge of the vulnerability of the mountain world and the ecological danger it faces. Momentary Resorts [was] created during three years of research in the Alpine region."

(from the publisher)