Peter Mathis - Bergwelten

Photographer Peter Mathis gave us something quite remarkable in a recent interview: “Sure, I shoot a few fine pictures every year. But for me, that’s not really what it’s all about. Much more, I want to pursue my effort, not just to take a good picture, but to take what is an extraordinary picture… an image that will stay with the viewer in his or her collective memory.”

Peter Mathis, Maloja, Switzerland, Pigment print on baryt paper, 52 x 70 ed. 10│100 x 135 ed. 5 © Artist

The pictures Peter Mathis is exhibiting here in Zurich show the many layers in which he has captured the truly extraordinary over the years. There is a startling variety in the work of the prize-winning Austrian photographer, who unites the different approaches and thematic material of his work hitherto – to go far beyond the definition of a sports and nature photographer. 

Peter Mathis grew from a mountain climber and alpinist into a sports photographer, from a chronicler of the alpine landscape into a keen observer of nature and his surroundings. The recent developments – stylistic as well as in content – have never been as obvious as in this current selection of photographs.

Over the course of an almost 30-year career, Peter Mathis has always continued to both broaden his visual scope and to hone it carefully. That begins at the formal level: primarily black-and-white shots are featured in the exhibition. At the same time, the photographer clearly defines his story’s focus, drawing European landscape more and more into the center of his work.
 
Peter Mathis, Silvretta 1, Switzerland, 2018, pigment print on baryt paper, 52 x 70 cm, ed. 10 | 100 x 135 cm ed. 5 © Artist

What is most fascinating about Peter Mathis’s work is that while the landscapes are absolutely true to life, they could never − thanks to their unique perspective and representation− be taken as a cliché for a region. Mathis exposes a kind of beauty that is theoretically open to all, but that is offered up as a visual thanks only to his tireless pursuit of the extraordinary motif.

Peter Mathis’s new works reflect a wide variety of forms in nature, both large and small. “My photographs are always about dimensions,” he has said. For persuit of scale is the singular characteristic shared by all the works of this detail-oriented Austrian, a man who stands among nature photographers as one who promotes a unique and expanded definition of “broadening horizons.”                                   Text: Jan Kirsten Biener