Alpe di Siusi
Scale, light, and a good sense of lingering in the wide meadow.
Elopement Photography
Alpe di Siusi is the gentle side of the Dolomites – wide open meadow rolling back to the peaks, soft ground in front and the big walls standing behind it. Room to walk, and the mountains held at a distance rather than overhead. It’s on the German-speaking side of the Dolomites, so you’ll also see it signed Seiser Alm. As it’s one of the most visited parts of these mountains, how you have it comes down to when.
Years from now, a good photograph doesn’t just show you Alpe di Siusi. You can still feel whether it was warm or cold, how quiet it was up there, sense what was in the air, and what it felt like to be there together.
“She captured not just the moments but the essence of the day, whilst making incredible art at the same time.” — Ebony, Alpe di Siusi, 2023
An Italian family I lived with as a ragazza alla pari first brought me to the Dolomites in 2007. They’ve stayed with me ever since – the valleys, and the people in them.
My work is anchored in Patgific – a 300-year-old Romansh concept from Graubünden, in the Swiss Alps, about slowing down enough to really enjoy what’s in front of you. Here in the Dolomites the Ladin have their own: sté de bona ueia – to be in good spirits, to enjoy life. Same family of feeling, different peaks.
Raised in a painter’s studio, I look for where the landscape builds its own architecture. Alpe di Siusi holds it at a distance – the meadow running soft and open to the foot of the peaks, and the peaks rising sheer behind it, the gentle and the sheer in one frame.
“Her work is for those who want their day held with clarity, where moments remain recognisable to themselves, even as they take on the quiet weight of memory.” — The Lane
Staying the night
By day the plateau is busy – it’s one of the most visited places in the Dolomites, and the meadows fill. The quiet here is on the other side of the day: once the access road closes to day visitors, it empties, and by first light it’s yours, spacious rather than staged. Bar the odd delivery run to the huts, there’s little else moving up there at dawn.
So if this is the one, you stay the night. It’s the whole difference between the plateau as everyone sees it and the plateau as it is early – the same meadow, without the crowd, the light long and low across the grass.
I take only a very small number of couples in the Dolomites each year, so that every day gets the attention and the hand-edited care it asks for.
While a single day is possible, most take around a day and a half – the mountains to yourselves through the quiet hours, first light, last light. Around twelve hours across it. €9000.
Espresso before sunrise, the light going long by evening, and being so present you forget to document it (luckily, I did).