In 1919, the Swiss pilot and photographer Walter Mittelholzer flew over Mont Blanc in a biplane photographing the alpine landscape.
Exactly 100 years later, researchers from the University of Dundee in Scotland have recreated his photographs to show the impact that climate change has had upon the mountain's glaciers.
In August 2019, one century after the biplane flight, Dr Kieran Baxter and Dr Alice Watterson from the 3DVisLab at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, part of the University of Dundee, flew over the Mont Blanc massif to repeat three of Mittelholzer’s photographs of the glaciers.
By using a process called monoplotting to triangulate the original camera position in airspace, the pair used the peaks and spires of the alpine landscape as anchor points to find the geolocation of where the historical shots were taken. The resulting photographs of the Argentiere, Mont Blanc Bossons and Mer de Glace glaciers show the large scale of ice loss in the region.
Read more at: University of Dundee
Comparison composition that shows Mer de Glace glacier from 1919 (left) to 2019 (right, in colour) (Photo Credit: Walter Mittelholzer, ETH-Bibliothek Zürich & Dr Kieran Baxter, University of Dundee)
