Consisting of a single-channel video and an installation of 30 photographs, Perfect Mountain examines the production of memories in the context of mass tourism. High up on an alpine glacier, a photostudio produces portraits of an endless stream of visiting tourists, most on their grand European tour from Middle and Far Eastern countries. Temporarily slipping into the guise of an alpine farmer and posed in front of a photo-wallpaper of the very mountain they in fact are on, Perfect Mountain questions notions of an ideal, a search for perfection both of experience and its representation through photography. The video observes the process of the photograph’s construction, its precision of staging and the detail of direction and instruction given by the photographer to her subjects. The photographs, presented as an installation, are the very ones made in the studio for these tourists and are now distributed all over the world into the homes of families and individuals, holding the memories of their Alpine holiday.
