Joseph Tairraz

Joseph Tairraz is the son of the syndic (mayor) and guide and buys a glass plate daguerreotype in Geneva. In 1857, he began to shoot portraits in a studio set up in the family home and then set up as a “photographer guide”. And what a job! because not only the device weighs more than 20kgs but each plate weighs at least ten kilos not to mention the tripods, the frames for the plates! It is therefore a real expedition to set off to immortalize characters and landscapes! This requires many carriers to take one or two photos. That same year, he created the “Alpine Tairraz Photography” studio and guided glaciologist John Tyndall on the Mer de Glace, participating in a scientific expedition on the movement of the glacier. A few years later, he invented a method of measurement by installing fixed markers on the banks of the glacier. His photos remain a significant testimony to the beginning of mountain photography with in particular the famous “Traversée de la Mer de Glace” taken in 1870.

His son Georges will take over. The times have changed. He still does portraits in the studio but he is a guide and follows his friends in the mountains. He develops the family business. His camera weighs only 12kgs and 4ks for the lens! And. He makes more and more “artistic” photos. But a drama will overturn his passion. In 1920 a pocket of the Mer de Glace glacier collapsed, drowning the valley under meters of sand and mud, submerging the city, the cellar of the Tairraz house was flooded, destroying the family collection forever. It’s a drama. He will die 4 years later.

His son Georges (hence Georges II), follows in his father’s footsteps. He is 24 years old. This is the time when the first cameras arrive on the market. Like his grandfather, it is a new passion for the Tairraz family. With his best friend Frison Roche he roams the deserts and lands of the Far North. With Gaston Rébuffat he made some exceptional films in the mountains. Georges II will take a photo of Rébuffat on the Aiguille de Roc, a photo that NASA will place in the Voyager probe in 1977, which became the first spacecraft to enter interstellar space in 2012, and is currently at around 24 billion miles from Earth!

And it will be Pierre who will continue this beautiful family story. Photographs, films, travels fuel his need for the “beautiful” that characterizes him. With him the “Tairraz alpine photography” dynasty comes to an end. For a century and a half, the Tairraz will be the incomparable photographers of Mont-Blanc and, over the generations, will taste the cinema. The dynasty went dormant when Pierre died in 2000. It leaves us with a certain way of looking at the mountain, of magnifying its forms to express the emotions of those who venture there. The “Tairraz gaze”. In 2015, the book “Tairraz, Les Alpes de père en fils” was published, which lists the most beautiful photographic works of the family.