Altitude

Created during a month-long journey across the central Andes in early 2020—at a moment when the pandemic frozed the world, Altitude emerged from a road trip of more than 8,000 kilometers through one of the most extreme and arid regions on Earth. Traveling mostly above 3,000 meters, from Mendoza and the slopes of Aconcagua to the salt flats of Uyuni and the Pacific coast of Chile, Gian Paolo Minelli transformed this demanding expedition into a slow, meditative photographic investigation. Rejecting both reportage and spectacular landscape imagery, Minelli chose to work with a large-format analog camera, embracing slowness, attention, and material presence. His gaze turns downward, toward the ground itself: fractured soils, dried riverbeds, lava crusts, salt plains, wind-polished stones, and sparse xerophytic vegetation. Water appears primarily through its absence—revealed only by erosion, sediment, and geological memory. The resulting images depict an ancient, almost extraterrestrial terrain shaped by volcanic forces and extreme aridity, where life persists at the very limits of possibility. At the same time, Altitude subtly addresses the present: climate change, the progressive depletion of water resources, and the environmental impact of lithium extraction—an often invisible cost of the so-called green economy. Rendered in stark black-and-white and acidic, surreal color tones, Minelli's photographs evoke a primordial world suspended between the emergence of life and the threat of its disappearance. Carefully printed to preserve tonal depth and material nuance, the images are presented in an elegant, soberly designed book whose form reinforces the contemplative nature of the work. Altitude is not a record of a journey, but a meditation on geological time, fragility, and the silent violence inscribed in the landscape—an austere and powerful reflection on the Anthropocene.