A photographic declaration of love

Kitzbühel | Issue 56 | Winter 2024/2025 | Text: Barbara Schneeberger

It is much, much more than, at the right juncture in time, capturing one single instant for all eternity. It requires a study of weather conditions, meticulous selection of the best angle, careful, sensitive portraits of local landmarks and somehow ampli-fying the meaning of what is being photographed. Those are unnerving prerequisites for anyone, yet they are the focal features which make the work of Markus Mitterer stand out over the last five years. The upshot: his brand-new photographic volume awaited with bated breath, “DAHOAM” (dialect for “at home” – applicable to home in the widest pos-sible sense, full of nuanced connotations).

The reputation of his extraordinary claim to the highest attainable photographic quality precedes this author, a professional Kitzbühel historiographer in every sense. In his newest work he dedicates his long-trained eye to the city of Kitzbühel and its three small neighbouring towns Reith, Aurach and Jochberg. Together the ensemble comprises one of the most well-known touristic region in Austria. The towns are interwoven in many other ways as well.

Through ongoing sharp-eyed observations and painstaking unearthing of tiny details, this opulent printed version was born. It generates a passion for its people and places in all four seasons of the year. Its pictures show unique scenes plucked from reality, landscapes and portraits ensconced in customs, historical traditions. The true and the genuine, profoundly authentic results are projected onto an impressive screen, a brightly lit stage by this master photographer in a book which is nearly cinematic. His own deep attachment to this “home” was an undisputed advantage, he knows the best spots and motifs, and above all else, he knows the people who are at home here.