The volume collects 60 analogic portraits by Jim Herrington of the icons of mountaineering or rather “the golden age of the mountains”. Over 20 years Herrington chased them around the world, from Beckey, Cassin, and Diemberger to Messner, Robbins, and Wickwire, a fearless generation who chose between the 1930s and 1970s to open the paths to the sky, desecrating with primitive equipment, ingenuity, talent and fortitude the highest peaks on the planet. In his preface, Alex Honnold, free climbing genius, provides us with the premises to reread the meaning of an epic that has ended but which almost lives in legend. Greg Child’s essay is a folk song that urges the reader, dragging along a rope of stories, humanity, and adventures, where one doesn’t always end up at the top. A short text by the same American photographer commemorates a dizzying editorial climb, chasing an almost equally impossible hunt.
* The book is the Italian edition of the volume published for the first time in English in 2017.