Les conquérants de l’inutile

Fabrice Schneider – Les conquérants de l’inutile

“This work is about the mountain as an ideologically determined topography: an inaccessible place, hostile and purifying, that generates myths; a place where the race for the conquest of a summit is charged by ideological rhetoric. The three works that I present articulate: – a history of the Eiger north face, a 5250 foot high murderous wall: the famous last problem of the Alps. – a dialogue from the 1926 mountain film Der Heilige Berg, whose actress, Leni Riefenstahl, became the controversial filmmaker of the third Reich – and a statue representing an eagle, erected by the soldiers of a mountain brigade, in memory of their surveillance of the Simplon Pass during World War II. This project allowed me to integrate my passion for mountaineering with my artistic practice, while paying attention to the display and the texture of the images.“

Diploma project (2012) by Fabrice Schneider

“ This work is about the mountain as an ideologically determined topography: an inaccessible place, hostile and purifying, that generates myths; a place where the race for the conquest of a summit is charged by ideological rhetoric. The three works that I present articulate:

– a history of the Eiger north face, a 5250 foot high murderous wall: the famous “last problem of the Alps”.
– a dialogue from the 1926 mountain film “Der Heilige Berg”, whose actress, Leni Riefenstahl, became the “controversial filmmaker of the third Reich”

– and a statue representing an eagle, erected by the soldiers of a mountain brigade, in memory of their surveillance of the Simplon Pass during World War II.

This project allowed me to integrate my passion for mountaineering with my artistic practice, while paying attention to the display and the texture of the images. ”

Fabrice Schneider

PHOTOGRAPHY, conquérants, Fabrice Schneider