New Delhi, Aug. 16 -- For many years, I had looked at books, magazines, websites and blogs, searching for photographs taken by Italian Vittorio Sella. Over the course of time, these photographs became like familiar friends-and often, on seeing a mountain image on Google, I knew it was a Sella. But nothing prepared me for the enormity of the moment when I visited the exhibition, titled Vittorio Sella: Photographer in the Himalaya, which opened at Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata on 8 August.

Delhi Art Gallery (DAG), in collaboration with Victoria Memorial, is showing for the first time in India a collection of 78 Sella prints from his expeditions around Kangchenjunga in 1899 and the Karakoram in 1909.

To see the original Sella prints-so...