'Here,' he said, his eyes sparkling with joy, 'men can do me no harm'. Stendhal; The Red and The Black, 1830.
The crooked shall be made strait.
Holy Bible Isiah 401-8.
(Col du Grand-Saint-Bernard 2012)
Do not succumb to fear of shadows, When the shade of the mountain creeps down.
Charles Nodier, Smarra, ou les Démons de la Nuit, conte fantastique, 1821.
(Musée et Chiens du Saint-Bernard, Martigny, 2012)
Wait and Hope.
Alexandre Dumas; The Count of Monte Cristo, 1844.
(La Vallee Blanche, Chamonix, 2011)
Ghosts of former travelers overwhelmed by snow haunted the scene of their distress.
Charles Dickens; Little Dorrit, 1857.
(L’hospice du Grand-Saint-Bernard 2012)
He clasps the crag with crooked hands.
Alfred Lord Tennyson; The Eagle, 1851.
(Musée et Chiens du Saint-Bernard, Martigny, 2012)
They were ascending the broken staircase of a giant ruin.
Charles Dickens; Little Dorrit, 1857.
(Col du Grand, St Bernard, 2012)
For in prosperity prayers seem but a mere medley of words, until misfortune comes and the unhappy sufferer first understands the meaning of the sublime language in which he invokes the pity of heaven! Alexandre Dumas; The Count of Monte Cristo, 1844.
The ice was getting Thinner. (L’hospice du Grand-Saint-Bernard, 2012)
Evil is not a substance but an absence of goodness. St Augustine; The Problem of Evil Enchiridion, 400AD.
The past, like the country through which we walk, becomes indistinct as we advance. Alexandre Dumas; The Count of Monte Cristo, 1844.
We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of living. Alexandre Dumas; The Count of Monte Cristo, 1844.
Librarie Des Alpes, Paris
2012
For the week of Paris Photo this site-specific work uses images made at the godforsaken (until the Monks arrived 1000 years ago) St Bernards pass and combines them with text from “les Pasants célébres” who had to take this oldest and lowest pass through the Alpes. For this show she has read Rabelais (1541), Stendhal (1800) Nodier (1825) Dumas 1832. Dikens, Turner and Napoleon. The project became a film Inland Island.
Monastic orders were the original model for British prisons with the idea being to encourage inmates towards a spiritual and moral contemplation; regarding institutions is a common subject of Molins work.
