Hydroelectric Sublime
The Émosson dams, located in a remote corner of the Swiss Valais, where towering mountains cradle serene reservoirs, stand as both a triumph and a scar. In their new book, photographers Beatrice Gorelli and Keiichi Kitayama delve into the region's paradoxes, capturing the uneasy coexistence of nature and modern engineering
- Words Ayla Angelos
The Swiss Alps, renowned for their sweeping valleys, pristine lakes, and towering, snow-draped peaks, are a landscape where only a few slender crescents of rock pierce the endless white, as if gasping for air. Yet tucked away (somewhat surprisingly) in this rugged land is the Émosson region, located in the Swiss canton of the Valais, where a power plant hides within a cavern 600m below the ground, and three hydroelectric dams rise from the terrain like a deliberate scar – an immense structure of concrete and steel that channels the mountains' glacial waters into a lifeline for modern civilisation. The serene, glassy surface of the reservoir mirrors the jagged peaks above, reflecting
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