BADILE
Photographed by Raymond Meier
Exhibition 01/12/2023 - 02/03/2024
It is considered one of the most famous mountains to climb in the Alpine region: the „cathedral of granite“, or „the dream edge in granite“. Watercolors of the Badile by Giovanni Giacometti, and, surprisingly, also by the young Alberto Giacometti, exist. Its sharp, towering 700-meter northern edge records for all eternity that the name „Bergell“ derives from the Latin „Praegallia“, meaning „before Gaul“. The Bergell once marked the last bastion of good before the infidel North. The slab alignments in the upper edge of the northern wall culminate in the shape of a funnel, giving Piz Badile the form of a shovel and, thereby, its name: „Badile“ is the Italian word for „shovel”.
Swiss photographer Raymond Meier, who has worked in New York as a fashion and advertising photographer for thirty years, has continuously photographed the Badile. In the unique photo laboratory in Soglio, together with Tosca Giovanoli, the platinum-palladium print is created. Platinum palladium prints are famous for their extremely fine, detailed reproduction, but, today, they are rarely printed to high perfection.
For Raymond Meier, this is a love project, a valley project. It is ongoing, there is no end in sight. The pictures frame the Badile in various light and weather conditions. The result is a photographic panorama of the mountain, its volume, its drawing, its presence and its disappearance.
BADILE
is a mountain in the Bernina Alps and measures 3308 metres above sea level. It is located in Bergell, in the Swiss canton of Graubünden, on the border with Italy. The pictures show the view from the mountain village of Soglio towards the northern edge.
PICTURES
Platinum-Palladium Prints developed in the photo studio Raymond Meier, in Soglio, with Tosca Giovanoli. The series began in 2019 and is ongoing.
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RAYMOND MEIER
*1957, Switzerland
Raymond Meier was born in Switzerland in 1957. In 1972, he began an apprenticeship as a photographer in Zurich, where he opened his studio for advertising photography in 1978. He owes his conceptual thinking and enjoyment of the photographic process to the high standards of Swiss advertising agencies of the time.
In 1986, he moved his studio to New York City, where he began his long-standing editorial collaboration with magazines such as Harper‘s Bazaar, Vogue and The New York Times. Meier‘s relationships with major fashion, jewelry and cosmetics brands have shaped their visual identities for three decades.
Throughout his career, he has also dedicated himself to his independent photographic practice. With his intense understanding and constant experimentation with the properties of analog and digital photography, Meier expresses the complexity and subtleties of the medium.
