Michael Wilkins
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Photograph of the Matterhorn's snow-covered pyramid rising above a narrow valley, framed by frosted larches and a river running past chalets in the foreground under grey cloud.

The Obvious Mountain

Zermatt, Switzerland · January 2018

1D X Mark II, 75 millimetres, f 11, 1/1000 of a second, ISO 800

Everyone photographs it. It is still the best-shaped mountain in Europe.

There is no original angle left on the Matterhorn, so I stopped trying for one and shot it the way it presents itself from the valley floor: framed by frosted larches, river running out of the bottom of the frame, the peak doing all the work. It is a genuinely absurd shape — a four-sided pyramid carved by four separate glaciers — and no amount of it being on chocolate boxes changes that.

Part of The Alps in Winter, a series.