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Ascending the Mountain of the Gods. Frederic Boissonnas – TMP Archive

Fred Boissonnas - TMP Archive

Fred Boissonnas – TMP Archive

 July-September 2014 – Centre of Mediterranean Mosaics – Dion Location: Centre of Mediterranean Mosaics – Dion As part of the 43th Olympus Festival Co-organization: Swiss Embassy in Greece, TMP Production: TMP Exhibition curating: Vangelis Ioakimidis Exhibition consultant: Giannis Kyritsis As part of the PhotoBiennale (Travelling exhibitions section) William Blake wrote that “great things are done when men and mountains meet.” In the life of the Swiss photographer Frederic Boissonnas, this aphorism indeed morphed from theory to practice and determined his path. Thanks to his award winning photograph of the White Mountain in 1902, Lord Napier invited him to Greece, initially to photograph Parnassus. Of course Frederic Boissonnas traveled throughout Greece for many years. But the reason for his first trip to Greece in 1903 remained the photographing of the highest peak in Europe. This exhibition which is organized in collaboration with the Embassy of Switzerland in Greece, honors not only the landscape of Olympus, but the ascent as well – for this reason photographs have been chosen from the three ascents of Frederic Boissonnas with Daniel Baud-Bovy and Christos Kakkalos. The mountain and its conquest function over the centuries in an epic way on the collective imagination. The climbing of a mountain may be seen symbolically anyways, as the path between individual and unknown. The objective is always the top, but on the arduous path up one must have endurance, patience, respect towards nature and towards one’s companions – just like life itself, whatever the top in sight happens to be. Frederic Boissonnas’s images of Olympus act as watchtowers, imparting the unique beauty of the Greek landscape and symbol, but also illustrate this course which begins as a journey towards the unknown, which when conquered becomes known. The myth is deconstructed to be rewritten through the eyes of each viewer.