The sublime beauty of these images illuminates that while this is some of the most perilous terrain on the planet, it is also some of the most beautiful. The peril exists not only for
the mountaineer who climbs these peaks but also for the photographer (and pilots) as the process of making these images at extreme altitudes was enormously dangerous.
The images represent a fresh and rare view of the border between emerging superpowers and their often vulnerable smaller neighbors. It is this composite and the comparison of the unflinching beauty, danger and immensity of the natu¬ral world within such a politically contested landscape that makes these photographs so compelling.
Thompson holds a PhD from the University of Oregon, where he wrote his dissertation on Visual Learning and the process of making visual value judgments. He received his BA in
Cultural Anthropology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Thompson worked as a photographer with National Geographic for 12 years covering such stories as the
future of the world's elephants, Bhutan's people and geography, the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal and Alaska's powerful and unre¬lenting wilderness.
