Renate Aller made the photographs in Mountain Interval at locations on six continents, from elevations as high as 22,500 feet near Mount Everest to European glaciers and peaks associated with her childhood vacations. The publisher describes the results as monumental yet not overpowering: Aller isolates the mountain from its expected surroundings, so that rock veins and textures, in their constantly transient state, are met as closely observed facts rather than distant scenery. Nothing here is offered as a commanding prospect; the grandeur is held at an intimate scale, and the familiar is presented as something to be looked at carefully.
Terrie Sultan contributes an essay. Radius Books publishes the book as Aller’s fourth monograph with the press, after Ocean | Desert, dicotyledon, and the long-term project Oceanscapes. The publisher’s own comparison to the sand dune images of Ocean | Desert is worth noting: both bodies of work approach immense natural forms through surface, detail, and continuous change, and in both the viewer is engaged in a way the publisher calls not overpowering. Across the mountain pictures, Aller relates parallel realities from different locations and opens a conversation between the different political landscapes in which we live.
The book is a hardcover with an acetate jacket, 14.25 by 10.25 inches, and the publisher’s catalogue lists 124 pages and 64 images. That scale suits the project’s double register, mass and fine geology at once. The acetate jacket also changes how the cover is encountered, holding the object slightly at a remove while the interior asks for close attention.
For a collection, the geographic reach is notable: the publisher locates the photographs across six continents. What distinguishes the volume within Aller’s own line of work is its method, the isolation of the mountain from its expected surroundings and a close reading of surface over the encompassing view. It is a book about sustained attention to forms that usually overwhelm the frame, and about what those acts of attention reveal of the landscapes we inhabit.
