Lugano
Vittorio Sella was born in Biella on August 28, 1859, and learned the basics of photography from his father, a textile entrepreneur, photography scholar, and author of “Il plico del fotografo,” the first practical and theoretical treatise on photography. Upon his father’s death in 1876, he became close to photographer Vittorio Besso, from whom he received a 30×36 cm format camera. He used it for his first circular panorama of the Alps from the summit of Monte Mars in 1879—a moment when he realized the potential of combining his two great passions: photography and mountaineering.
From 1889 to 1909, Vittorio Sella explored mountainous regions across four continents. The documentation from his many journeys to the Caucasus and the scientific results achieved during these expeditions earned him the Cross of the Order of St. Anna, awarded by Tsar Nicholas II, and the Murchison Award from the Royal Geographical Society in London. In 1897, he joined an expedition to Alaska, led by Luigi Amedeo of Savoy, as the official photographer. This mission was followed by another to the Rwenzori in 1906, where he reached the summit of the mountain bearing the same name, and a second expedition to the Karakoram, where he became the first to ascend Chogolisa up to 7,498 meters.
Throughout his photographic career, Sella employed various photographic techniques, from wet collodion to dry collodion, and, in 1881, gelatin silver bromide plates, with which he created an eleven-plate circular panorama from the summit of the Matterhorn. Vittorio Sella exhibited his images in national and international exhibitions, receiving numerous awards and honors from 1884 to 1923. During the 1930s, he focused on reprinting and reinterpreting his negatives using a technique he developed himself, known as “double-tone toning.” Today, within what is now the Vittorio Sella Museum, located next to the Monastery of San Gerolamo, his photographic laboratory is still preserved, including the solar enlarger he used until his death in his hometown in 1943.