To name a mountain
The book and project ‘To name a mountain’ by Alfonso Almendros are a dark and poetic retelling of a journey that took place long ago, a layered story about inner turmoil, longing and the power of imagination. The inspiration for this project is the journey that the German-American painter Albert Bierstadt and the American writer Fitz Hugh Ludlow made through the Rocky Mountains in 1863.

The story goes that during the expedition, the painter was taken aback by the view of an enormous mountain and made a sketch on the spot, showing a dark-grey storm hanging over the disproportionately scaled-up mountain peaks. Bierstadt called his painting ‘A storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mount Rosalie’ – in honour of his travelling companion’s wife, whom he was secretly in love with. The work was interpreted as a representation of his emotional anguish, and the hitherto unnamed mountain was christened Mount Rosalie.
‘To name a mountain’ is an investigation of this famous expedition. Almendros mixes analogue photographic procedures, pictorial techniques and digital reinterpretations of landscapes with the work of Bierstadt to create a fictionalised documentary, exuding romance and fascination for insurmountable and unknown nature.