Architectural photography at great heights
Architectural photography is usually about shiny sky scrapers, trying hard to compete with the sky which is reflected in their glass covered frames of steel and concrete. Not this series, though. It’s architectural photography in a whole new perspective.
“I had dreamed of this hiking trip to Mount Everest Base Camp for years, and had trained for months. So I wanted to be able to concentrate fully on this hike, and had planned to leave my camera at home. But somehow a colleague convinced me to bring it along anyway. I’ve cursed him repeatedly – I didn’t use the camera at all for the first two weeks, but still had to haul the equipment up and down the mountains, ascending 12,000 meters (39,000 feet) and descending 8,000 meters (26,000 feet) over a trail of more than 400 kilometers (250 miles). As if the hiking wasn’t hard enough already.”
“But then my eye caught the outhouses strewn randomly across the landscape. The shabby toilets were such a contrast compared to the spectacular landscapes of the Himalaya: their flimsy build quality against the eternity of the mountain peaks, their ugliness versus the raw beauty of nature, and their stench of urine and excrements mixed with the pure mountain air. ”
“I just had to start capturing the extreme contrast. The result is a series of ‘architectural’ photography with a rather unique character. Photography has become my second nature, I do it continually and diligently. Even at great heights.”