Alex Buisse is a photographer and filmmaker with over 15 years of experience. He specializes in outdoor, industrial, and aerial imagery, and has worked with clients like Patagonia, Garmin, Red Bull, Arc'teryx, Sports Illustrated, BMW, the International Olympic Committee, and many more. He is based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and makes frequent trips back to his second home of Chamonix, France. You can follow him on Instagram @alexbuisse.

Alex’s work has featured in two of our issues: “Alpine Angels” in SJ 321, which follows the Peloton de Gendarmerie de Haute Montagne (PGHM), arguably the most elite mountain rescue force in the world, and “Shegeng” in SJ 323, about route development at one of the largest caves in China, a country littered with geologic wonders.

 

Q&A with Photographer Alex Buisse

Summit Journal: You’re living what many would consider to be a dream job: Climbing photographer. Did you always want to pursue creative expression as a career?

Alex Buisse: No, I actually did a PhD in computer science and climbing photography was not really on my radar at all until about halfway through my university studies. As my program was coming to an end, I realized that was not the life I wanted. Simultaneously, that's kind of where I discovered climbing photography, and the two really fed each other. 

I was motivated to become a better photographer because I was seeing these amazing things when I went climbing, and I wanted to do them justice. I'm sure all of us have experienced this at some point: when you go to the mountains, you see the most breathtaking views, you take photos, and then you come back and they just look so disappointing. I didn’t feel like what I shot captured the majesty and the beauty that I had just experienced.

That really motivated me to become a better photographer. Conversely, it motivated me to become a better climber so that I would get access to more remote places and higher peaks. That was a really interesting dynamic. 

Eventually, I finished my PhD, but before I defended it, which I never ended up doing, I took the plunge into photography.

That was back in 2011, so almost 15 years ago.

I moved to Chamonix with a few thousand euros in savings, and I decided I would live there until my savings ran out, trying to make a living as a climbing photographer. 

Short answer: it worked out. And I consider myself very, very lucky. 

 

The photo on the right shows a serac that has fallen down the normal route of Mont Blanc du Tacul, the site of some of the worst climbing tragedies of the past decades. A webcam confirms several rope teams were in its path mere minutes earlier, setting in motion a frenzied search for buried victims. Miraculously, everyone managed to jump into nearby crevasses to save their lives. From “Alpine Angels” by Alex Buisse in SJ 321. 

 

SJ: What was your path to world-traveling photographer?

AB: The thing about a career in climbing photography, like any career, is that it is extremely unglamorous.

I guess, when you get to Jimmy Chin levels, you can have people doing the non-glamorous work for you. And I don't even know if he does, but for the rest of us, it's a lot of time marketing, it's a lot of time quoting clients, a lot of time doing sales, and then a lot of time on a computer editing photos, processing, and then just trying to get your name out there and trying to stay relevant. It’s a lot of getting your ducks in a row, trying to run a business.

Still, it's a good problem to have on many levels. At least speaking for myself, I get to go to these absolutely amazing places, world-class climbing destinations, and see people climbing on remarkable pieces of rock or ice.

And then of course, I don't even put climbing shoes on during assignments. I don't actually get to climb anything. And my personal climbing has fallen off a cliff (pun somewhat intended), especially since having kids. At some point, I feel like you have to choose between really developing the photography or trying to do more of the climbing.

At least that's the choice that I was starting to feel like I had to embrace, which led me in a commercial direction. At the end of the day, I would rather be taking photos of the Verdon Gorge than being in an office and looking at an Excel spreadsheet, though.

SJ: How has climbing photography changed since you got started?

AB: Well, AI is kind of a new development, though I don't know that it has really affected climbing photography much yet.

I’d guess that AI is replacing kind of the bottom 50% of the jobs and the things that don't require a lot of creativity or a lot of expertise or a lot of skills. But those jobs are still really, really important for photographers, the “I need to pay my rent kind of jobs”. 

It’s important to note that I started at the tail end of print and magazines. It's great that there's a revival of sorts with Summit Journal, but really, with a few key exceptions, magazines have all but disappeared.

Ultimately, I think by far the biggest change has been social media and TikTok and influencers. A lot of the budgets are going to social media and social media-friendly content, and that is a completely different way of telling stories. 

I'm of a previous generation, I'm turning 40 in a few months. And I mean, I understand Instagram and TikTok and all of that stuff, but I'm not that active, and I don't have the fluency in social media that younger people typically have.

That's starting to be a real problem, to be honest. Now your social media following is a huge factor in getting jobs. Engagement is a massive asset. And in my video work, I get asked to shoot vertically for social media. The social media content that used to be an add-on to campaigns and to shoots is now the thing that's driving the client request, and it's almost like the feature film is secondary.

That's been a massive shift and one I don't see changing back. I think that social media's here to stay and short-form content that's really easy to consume, easy to serve, and has easy metrics for clients to look at, that's here to stay.

 

A father and son, unable to climb the infamous “Pas de IV” on the classic Cosmiques Arête on the Aiguille du Midi, are benighted as a storm rages. With the PGHM helicopter grounded by the storm, the unit requests an emergency crew to turn the cable car to the summit back on in the middle of the night, thereby allowing the team (including the legendary Jeff Mercier) to access the start of the route, fix a line, install a winch, and hoist the two climbers back up to safety. Photo from “Alpine Angels” by Alex Buisse in SJ 321. 

 

SJ: Your photos feature in an essay in the current issue, SJ 323, about a budding climbing destination in the Middle Kingdom, and highlights how Chinese climbers are discovering and developing, in this case, some very impressive tunnels and caves. How did you connect with Andrea Zhao, and what impressed you most about being on site at this burgeoning climbing scene?

AB: When I was living in Canmore, I had some pretty close friends who are originally from China, now living in Canada. Through them, I kind of got introduced to the Chinese climbing community, both in Canada and China. My name got passed along, and I was eventually contacted by Arc’teryx China to potentially make a movie about this new cave that was being developed by He Chuan, the main developer.

I ended up going for the first time in October 2024 to scout for the movie and meet some of the key people working to develop the Shegeng Cave, which at that point was less than a year old. Andrea and her husband, Eric, had also been invited by Arc’teryx to discover the place, and we got along very well.

They both had lived abroad, in the States, I believe, and I think Eric was raised in Spain. So they had a dual perspective of both Western and Chinese climbing culture, and they could see where Chinese climbing was — and is — going.

What impressed me the most is just how climbing is absolutely exploding in China, the caliber of people, and how much potential there is, because obviously China is a huge country. They have a ton of rock of all sorts. The surface has barely been scratched. 

At the same time, you see that all of a sudden, I think driven a lot by the Olympics, you have sport climbing in particular, but climbing in general, becoming a very popular thing. I think we are going to keep seeing more and more Chinese on the international climbing stage.

I'm also helping with the American Alpine Journal and the amount of climbs that are coming out in China by Chinese climbers is just growing exponentially every year.

 

SJ: What do you look for in stories you pursue and assignments you accept? What interested you in the Shegeng piece?

AB: To be honest, I look at the budget; I am at a stage in my life where I have a mortgage. Well, I actually have two mortgages because we have a little place in Chamonix. And two kids. I need to make a living. 

This is a passion, of course, and I love climbing and photography with all my soul, but I also need to make a living, and I need to pay my bills. That means that I take a lot of commercial jobs. I try to work with companies that respect climbing, even if they're not experts, or adventure in general.

But then at the end of the day, I will do things that I find interesting.

I know for a lot of other photographers, commercial shoots might not be the most creative or fulfilling things, but they pay the bills really well, and they allow you to have the freedom to do the personal projects or the projects that don't have a big budget, like the PGHM story.

SJ: In SJ 321, you wrote and photographed the article, “Alpine Angels”, about the specialized rescue corps found across France, the PGHM. You tagged along for six weeks, across several years, as they made rescue missions from helicopters. What were you hoping to showcase with this piece?

AB: Well, I had been living in Chamonix for a long time when I started this project, so I knew a lot of the rescuers on a personal level.

Quite a few of them were my friends and I could see what they do, the level of professionalism and expertise and risk that they were taking on a daily basis. While there had been stories told before, I felt like it hadn't been told in photo format for a while, or at least not as well as I think they deserved. 

So I used my connections and my friends to get the ear of the commander who was very supportive. That was in 2015, and I spent four weeks over the whole year, one week in each season.

The idea was to really embed, so I went on all these rescues. The fact that I was an experienced climber and an alpinist meant that they didn't have to babysit me as much.

After some initial screening and seeing how I behaved, I think they were relatively satisfied that I wasn't going to immediately become a second casualty. That freed up some time and space for them to actually do their job. But for me, I was very deliberate in that the image always came second and that I was not getting in the way.

A lot of that project was just waiting in a base, just waiting for things to happen, but that allowed me to get to know them and really connect with them on a human level.

SJ: Given the nature of some of your projects, in particular Mont Blanc Lines, do you consider your role as that of photographer or documentarian?

AB: Mont Blanc Lines, my climbing and skiing routes project, is a bit different from my work as a climbing photographer, I would say. And in that role, I’m definitely more of a documentarian, or even historian at times, than a photographer. I really like that because it kinda scratches another itch for me. 

And I guess I just love data. I love information. 

I had purchased a lot of really old guidebooks just because they were exhaustive, and I liked the idea of having them even though I had no immediate use for them. Then with this project, 10 years later, I'm like, Oh, I actually have a use for all those guidebooks I've been collecting.

With this project, a lot of information is, in some cases, very, very difficult to find. Some of it I go to relative extremes to find, like interviewing first ascensionists if they are still alive or going to research libraries. I’ll review really obscure guidebooks or books and watch random YouTube videos shot with a GoPro in 2004 just to get one piece of information about whether the route goes to the left of that boulder or to the right.

And that's information that people are unlikely to find otherwise unless they go to the same length as I have. Then I make it really easily accessible, which to me is one of the things I'm most proud of with this project. But the photography, in some ways, is secondary to all of this.

 

Photos from “Alpine Angels” by Alex Buisse in SJ 321, a behind-the-scenes look at one of the elite mountain rescue units in Europe.

 

SJ: Sort of a basic question, what do you look for when you’re out photographing and what makes a great photo?

AB: I mean, there are as many definitions of a great photo as there are photographers, or even people looking at photos. 

For me, it's a photo that evokes emotion, that stirs something. It's more than conveying information. It can be inspiration, it can be fear, it can be, oh, all sorts of things. Compassion. But what makes it a great photo is when you manage to create an emotion in somebody who sees the image. And I really try to construct my images in ways that tell strong stories, but that has to be in service of creating emotion.

SJ: What can Summit Journal readers expect to see from you next?

AB: I have absolutely no idea. Right now, I'm kind of focusing on family life, here in Nova Scotia, in Atlantic Canada, where I moved last year.

I am also very much working on a follow-up book to my 2021 Mont Blanc Lines. This one is going to be for the whole world. I counted this morning, I need 96 posters of which I have about 75 done, though I need to update some old ones, and then I need to write histories, gather photos and interview climbers, which involves a lot of research. So that's a massive effort for the next six months at least.

 

 

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