Adolphe Braun, pioneer of alpine photography

Watching the Glacier Disappear
Text Collections Adolphe Braun

Adolphe Braun (1812-1877) was one of the first to understand the commercial potential of photography. His company Braun et Cie pioneered technical image reproduction and was renowned for the quality of the carbon prints it produced from the late 1860s until the First World War. The Alsatian company was particularly renowned for its large-scale reproductions of masterpieces of heritage sites and mountain landscapes.

Braun's photographic choices were in keeping with the times. At a time when mountain tourism was booming, Braun organized expeditions to hoist his heavy wooden camera to the summit of the Alps. This monochrome panoramic photograph of the Aletsch glacier (canton of Valais), taken between 1870 and 1877, is a case in point. This shot is part of a standardized representation of the mountain. The glacier is scaled to the eye and becomes a place of freedom, wonder and speed. This cliché persists in the collective imagination, even as Switzerland's largest glacier tends to disappear.

Adolphe Braun

Adolphe Braun was a French photographer born in Besançon (France) in 1812 and died in Dornach (France) in 1877. In 1854, he proposed a collection of photographed flowers for industrial designers to the Académie des Sciences. Buoyed by his success at the 1855 Universal Exhibition, he continued his career as a photographer, developing numerous other series, including L'Alsace photographiée, for which he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.

In 1848, he founded the Braun et Cie company and opened stores in Paris, Rome, London, New York, St. Petersburg and, in 1883, at the Louvre, where he sold reproductions of masterpieces from major museums and heritage sites, as well as landscape photographs. Over nearly half a century, the Alsatian company photographed almost one hundred thousand works. In the process, Adolphe Braun earned the nickname “the Gutenberg of art”.

Watching the Glacier Disappear

Watching the Glacier Disappear, a wide-ranging art exhibition open to all, takes place outdoors and indoors in every region of Switzerland, from Lausanne to Grisons and from Valais to Zurich.

It brings together artists of all disciplines, past and present. It networks and federates numerous partner institutions around the highly topical theme of melting glaciers.

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