Walter Niedermayr: Reservate des Augenblicks / Momentary Resorts

A seminal book cited in The Photobooko Vol 2 by Martin Parr & Gerry Badger Awarded Kodak Photographic Book Prize 1999 From the publisher: Cable railway stations, ski runs and panorama terraces - the Alps a playground for winter sports fans and enthusiastic mountain climbers: a populated Alpine leisure park ... In his tableaus 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 photgraphic eye captures the traces of the Alpine leisure industry as aethetic 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« is a collection of Walter Niedermayr's most recent work, created during three years of research in the Alpine region.