Interviews & Press
In 1981, a 23-year old photographer happened across a book in his local library. It was, In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods, by Galen Rowell. Documenting the 1975 American expedition to climb K2, the world’s second highest mountain, Rowell’s pictures dramatically illustrate the barely imaginable reality of the Karakoram. Located in a remote corner of Asia, where Pakistan, India, China and Afghanistan defend disputed borders, The Karakoram region remains little populated, and visitors are limited to elite rock climbers and mountaineers. The young photographer was Colin Prior, and his new book, The Karakoram is the culmination of a lifelong obsession sparked by that discovery in the library. In particular it was Rowell’s photograph of the Trango Towers that commandeered Colin’s imagination, and drove him to visit and photograph the region, not just once, but on six different expeditions. Fifteen years passed before the first of these adventures in 1996, when Colin was working on a British Airways commission. It was these commissions that launched his reputation as the panoramic mountain photographer par excellence. He returned to the Karakoram in 2004, 2013, 2014, 2015, and finally in 2019...
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