Guido Baselgia

The Swiss photographer Guido Baselgia, born in 1953 in the Engadin, is known for his analogue landscape and light photography, which often borders on abstraction. After training as a structural draughtsman, he studied photography at the Zurich School of Applied Arts and, from the late 1990s onwards, began to focus increasingly on landscape as a cultural concept and subject. In his slow and meticulous working processes, he travels like an explorer to geologically remote areas, including the Alps, the Andes and northern Norway. A central element in Baselgia's works is the observation and depiction of light, which he describes as the "primordial material of life and photography". He eschews harsh contrasts and sharp lines, working instead with gentle transitions, which often give his concentrated black-and-white photographs a painterly quality. Baselgia's work encompasses several well-known series such as "Hochland", "Weltraum", "Silberschicht" and "Light Fall", which explore extreme landscapes and light phenomena. His works are featured in numerous publications and exhibitions. In 2016, for example, he exhibited in Pontresina, linking the local conditions of Piz Languard with his international shooting locations. To mark his exhibition at the Fotostiftung Schweiz (2019/2020), the book Guido Baselgia – As if the world could be measured. Baselgia’s work highlights the enduring relevance of analogue photography and has been recognised with several awards, including the Culture Prize of the Canton of Graubünden and the Municipality of Pontresina.

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ARVENZEIT – The trees are waiting to be read
Around 1200, «reading nature» meant being able to detect signs sent by God. This Swiss stone pine could be 900 or even 1400 years old; no one knows exactly. What can be concluded with some certainty is that it germinated and began growing long before Leonardo da Vinci or Jürg Jenatsch, possibly around 1200. Looking towards Piz Rosatsch, it stands exactly 1.87 km away from Muottas da Schlarigna, at 2200 m above sea level—as if a burning glass had detached it from the God Plazzer. Its gigantic shape challenges the eye of the beholder: What a colossal longitudinal section of historical periods and climate fluctuations it has witnessed! Francis Ponge, in his Le parti pris de choses (Librairie Gallimard 1942, translated into English by Lee Fahnestock as The Nature of Things), has a whole chapter on «Fauna and Flora» in which he calls on us to be more appreciative and understanding of nature. The trees, he writes, are waiting to be read.