2005 Banff Mountain Photography Competition
Special Mention
Menno Boermans: “Glacier de Moiry, Valais, Switzerland”
“This image of Glacier de Moiry explains why I am so passionate about mountaineering. The sun coming through and the steaming clouds above the crevasses give the image the feel of the earth having just been born. With my photography I try to show the beauty of the mountain world, to provide evidence for people who don’t understand why we climb.”
Though Dutch photographer Menno Boermans, born in 1977, earns a steady income at Amsterdam’s daily newspaper Het Parool, slow days might see him halfway up a frozen waterfall in the Swiss Alps. He finds the split ideal: “When I am in Amsterdam I can dream about new climbs and think of ideas. And when I am in the mountains, I think about portraiture and can daydream about the ‘easy’ life in a city. I think the combination works well.” Boermans has been fascinated by all things mountainous since he first visited the Alps at age 16, and he has been photographing his trips ever since. As he became a more dedicated climber and skier, his photography too gained new heights. During the last few years, Boermans’s photos have been published in the likes of Dutch magazines Limits and OpPad, as well as in Outside and Alpinist. He has also worked on assignment for National Geographic Channel, the Swiss tourism agency, Olympus, and Swiss equipment company Mammut. Boermans’s upcoming book, containing his best mountain photos from recent years, is due out in December 2005.