a gift (Mt Blanc)

with thanks to R.F.

mountains without end

My new book, "Lesley Punton - mountains without end" has come back from the printers. Here's a preview of a few spreads from the book. Sandie Macrae, Director of ROOM, and ROOMBOOKS - the gallery's publishing arm, has written the foreword. Thomas A Clark has written an essay on my practice entitled On Looking at Mountains, as has Dr David Watson in his piece Walking as Knowing, and Alec Finlay has contributed a poem Pataphysical Cuillin. Some of my own writings, fragments of which appear within this blog, are included in texts at the end that collectively come under the heading notebook.

ISBN 978-0-9549915-6-2

edition of 1000

64pp, full colour, soft-back, burst bound, lithographically printed, 246x189mm

Contributors (text) Thomas A Clark (UK), Dr David Watson (Australia), Alec Finlay (UK), Sandie Macrae (UK) & Lesley Punton (UK)

Published by ROOMBOOKS

Date : September 2013

£10 + p&p available directly from my website and at Aye Aye Books, Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow.

summer camp

An image I made from the Aguille du Midi, Mt Blanc, looking down on the tent pits dug by climbers en route to the summit of Mt Blanc, and making the landscape appear pitted by craters. (as a tent geek, I think I managed to spot one of my own tents, a Trango 2, when viewed at full res!)

la jonction

La Jonction is the spectacular meeting place of the Glacier des Bossons and the Glacier de Taconnez on the Massif de Mt Blanc, and this was my first experience of standing upon a glacier. Being the meeting point of two glaciers, this is a heavily crevassed jumble, with creaking ice and occasional falling seracs. The Gite a Balmat, a mere howff amongst some large boulders, is reached just minutes before you reach La Jonction and it was here that, in 1786, Jacques Balmat and Doctor Gabriel Paccard bivvied overnight before making their successful first ascent of Mt Blanc, the view of which dominates the scene beyond.

Looking down a crevasse on La Jonction, July 2007, Photograph courtesy of Jim Hamlyn