There is a world that remains unknown to most, it is that of the high mountains. A few seasoned climbers have access to it, but some do not associate this dizzying passion with a practice of artic photography. Very close to us, it was enough for a young native of the Belgian flat country to meet the summits of the Swiss Alps and the Mont-Blanc Massif to decide to devote his life to it. Today, more than 10 years after a first initiatory hike in Valais and then discovering the Matterhorn, he devotes himself body and soul to one thing: seeing and photographing the Alps. If nothing predisposed Thomas Crauwels to become both a photographer and a mountaineer, with ABOVE, his first book, he proves that he has today become one of the only photographers to be able to offer such images of summits all located more than 4000 meters above sea level. Thanks to him, we have access to extraordinary landscapes. His black& white approach, his mastery of contrasts and lights and a maturity acquired through his explorations allow him to sublimate the mountain without ever freezing it in a stereotypical representation. Each of his images is the result of a decisive moment, carefully thought out and elaborated, whether it concerns the organisation of his expeditions or the mental construction of the images to be created. Cartographic studies, choice of the right weather window, formal research geared towards the quest for purity are at the service of a double desire: both to restore an emotion and to preserve the magic of a fleeting moment. ABOVE is therefore not a mountain book like any other. Above all, he tells the story of a photographer’s consuming passion for a massif whose sumptuous beauty he has captured. The repetition of black and white images underlines the fascination exerted on the photographer by the vertigo of a summit, the pure line of a ridge, the white light of a hanging glacier, the harmony of a peak, the slope of a precipice, the verticality of a wall. Throughout the chapters, the photographer becomes the messenger of a contemplation where aesthetics are combined if not with the mystic, at least with his quest . In a slow process of idealisation, the mountain takes on all the finery of a true sacred figure, appearing and then disappearing.
