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End of season party in Ischgl 2012:
"Ballermann of the Alps"
Photo: Lois Hechenblaikner
A few days before the borders of Tyrol are cordoned off, a camper van rolls through the Inn Valley to the north.
At the wheel is someone who spits poison and gall just by looking out the window.
The second home chalets growing up on the slopes of his home country?
“Rustic cancers,” he grumbles.
The souvenir shops for vacationers?
»High altars of kitsch«, full of »Hong Kong rubbish in Tyrolean garb«.
The photographer Lois Hechenblaikner is an eloquent guy.
Growing up and deeply rooted in Tyrol, he has been documenting with his Leica for decades the consequences of tourism in - according to the Tyrolean hymn - "holy land" between Brenner and Kitzbühel: environmental degradation, urban sprawl, land sale.
Hechenblaikner has been known beyond Austria at the latest since his book »Ischgl« was published in 2020 - a 240-page portrayal of the Tyrolean winter sports community from which the coronavirus was spread across Europe.
Since 1994 the photographer has been capturing the transformation of the once poor mountain farming village into a jet set and party address.
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