Bikinis and mountains, well not admittedly your most natural combination. But if you close your eyes you may imagine the one or other typological similarity: Mountains, valleys, rounded peaks, well, sure, OK, say no more. Perhaps the one or other mountain today needs a bikini to hide what it kept neatly tucked away for eons under meters of glacier ice, now merrily melting away. Perhaps today, singing “Last Christmas” and wearing a bikini, you’ll enjoy drawing a snowy angle in the cool white while you gaze in wonder at those majestic peaks. Irrespective of how you spend Christmas, with a bikini in the Alps or a bikini on the beach – or festively clad next to your Tannebaum – we’d like to wish you a very merry Christmas.

Now it may be a little late to send out Christmas cards, but a postcard now and again, that’s always a pleasant surprise for the lucky recipient. And you’ll find plenty of unusual images in the postcard book “Bikini und Berge”, the Swiss Alpine Museum has just brought out. It brings together 40 cards, ostensibly just “the tip of the iceberg from a riptide of images tucked away in the impressive photo archive of Kunstanstalt Brügger in Meiringen”. Said company, namely “Kunstanstalt Brügger”, was specialized in hotel and tourism advertising. Which is why almost all the images are suffused with marvelous holiday architecture and clothing true to the zeitgeist of the day: Indulge and buy yourself a copy, with or without the bikinis and the mountains. (AS)

Bikini in den Bergen:
Badefotografie der Kunstanstalt Brügger Meiringen.
Ein Postkartenbuch.
ed. Alpinen Museum der Schweiz
With texts by Köbi Gantenbein, Beat Hächler, Stefan Hächler & Meret Speiser
40 colored postcards that can be torn out,
Texts section: 24 p., 9 b&w ills., hardcover,
Scheidegger Spiess, Zurich, 2015
ISBN 978-3-85881-481-4
EUR 24.00