Michael Blann

Michael Blann raced in Australia as a younger man before making his name behind a camera, and the two have never really separated. He is the photographer behind Mountains: Epic Cycling Climbs, a book that did something no race broadcast manages: it made the mountains themselves the subject, rather than the backdrop to a bike race.

The project took three years. Blann photographed the most famous European climbs in the history of cycling through all four seasons, working in part from helicopters with high-definition cameras — the only way to show an ascent as a whole shape rather than a series of corners. The result documents the Grand Tours when these roads are lined with spectators, and the same roads when there is nobody on them at all.

For SWI he is on the other side of the lens: the rider in the Stelvio photographs. Someone who has spent three years working out how to photograph a mountain pass, riding one.