The photographs of the white fleece covered glacier ice, were shot in 6×9 format. The prints on analogue transparent paper are slightly smaller than the original negatives and condense the information. They are mounted in Light Boxes.
The grotto in the Rhone glacier was built in 1870. The tunnel must be carved into the ice again every spring because of glacial movement. In recent decades climate change has become a real threat for the grotto. According to the most recent numbers, the glacier lost ~1300 m in the last 120 years. In order to slow down the fast melting, the tunnel is covered with white fleece. The grotto that once stood inside the glacier, now lies on top.
MELTING DIAMONDS | FOTOGRAMMS 2019
MELTING DIAMONDS is a continuous inventory whose purpose is to list the different types of ice, using photograms of glacier pieces. The photogram is a photographic process without a camera, invented in the 19th century. The result looks like an X-ray of the object: a precious diamond printed on the paper. The “MELTING DIAMONDS series, Field Studies”, highlights the fragility of glaciers, and keeps in a unique print a last trace before the disappearance.
HEAD OF ROSES | C - PRINTS 150x120cm | 2019
The Swiss legend of the “Armen Seelen" (poor souls) relates the souls of those who, during their lifetime disrespected nature, therefore imprisoned in glaciers after their death. The photos HEAD OF ROSES shows the molded head of the artist in ice with enclosed plants. When the ice melts, all that remains of the sculpture is the vegetation. The ice reflects the ephemerality of life and its programmed disappearance to reveal flowers shows that when one thing disappears it gives way to another.
In an idea of renewal and metamorphosis, the cold of ice and death give birth to plants, a sign of hope and tenderness.
WRAPPED COLDNESS | C - PRINTS 150x120cm | 2009 / 2015
Due to the rapid retreat of the Glaciers in central Switzerland the shrinking ice caps are carefully covered by a giant fleece in an effort to reduce the summer melt. Glaciers throughout the Alps are losing one percent of their mass every year and, even supposing no acceleration to that rate, will have disappeared by the end of the century.
STAIRS AND MORE STAIRS | C - PRINT 120x600cm | 2019
The stairs immortalized in this monumental photo composition were installed with the aim of transporting tourists to the “Konkordia” hut. These "stairs to heaven" are direct witnesses of the melting of glaciers. They become a unit of measurement, since each year stairs must be added to allow them to perform their function.
Those stairs "towards the sky" ironically keep growing towards the ground.
MA SAMAR | C - PRINTS 100x80cm | 2019
Ma Samaritaine is a carte blanche for photographers who accompany the transitional phase and the transformative architectural gesture at the new Samaritaine, an iconic department store in Paris.
“ The photographers were faced with an exercise in applied photography, in a specific place, with all its contingencies, its history, and its ongoing transformation. Since construction work is already under way, we also knew that this was going to be the last time that we would be able to have these artists’ insights into this place even as it is being modified. The final result, extremely challenging from an aesthetic point of view, also represents a segment of memory of La Samaritaine - and of Paris, as well.
The experience will of course continue in different ways, tracking the progress of the renovation, with several modalities for following the work, and the interventions of new prestigious authors. “
CHRISTIAN CAUJOLLE | CURATOR
KEP - RUINES MODERNES | 2010
In many of my works the architecture stands in the center and, through its appearance, represents historical, social and political phenomenons.
I am particularly interested in places that show “layers” and, through various architectural elements, can be read like a book.
The photographs are an inventory of the abandoned colonial and modernist villas in Kep Cambodia. The first series of photographs focus on signs of the re-appropriation of the buildings by the local population. The second part is an archive of the villas, still visible in 2008 - 2010.
Kep was the favorite seaside resort of the French and Cambodian elite from the early 1900s until the 1960s. During the Khmer Rouge period, many French colonial houses and villas in Kep were destroyed. The Khmer Rouge held particular hatred for Kep, since it represented success, capitalism and foreign influence. Currently, the tourist city is a real ghost town. The troubled times and the intense famine that followed the years after the Pol Pot regime, strongly enabled looting. The decorations and furniture in the houses that had not disappeared to be used as firewood were sold at a ridiculous price to the Vietnamese.
Some of these old colonial villas have been transformed into luxury resorts. A handful of them serve as primitive shelters, inhabited by a few poor families in the region.
Most of the houses remain abandoned, invaded by vegetation, or taken over by the jungle.
LINED UP BORDERS | C - PRINTS 150x120cm | 2008
The borderline, or the artificial division of the landscape, is the theme of the photographs. The horizontal line, a human designed architectural element which integrates with the wild, strong landscape, is the guiding motive of the series and reduces the borderline to its pure abstract concept.
HIGH ALTITUDES | C - PRINTS 150x120cm | 2007
In the series of “High Altitudes” the primary subject is an amazing force of nature, the sublime mountain. On closer examination of each image we discover a piece of architecture, such as a door or a bunker, nestled in this hard environment. All these military items built in the Swiss Alps during the Second World War, raise questions on the political role of Switzerland at that time. The images reflect the fear and absurdity of this period.
MADRILÈNES | 2015/16
In the city of Madrid, seen and filmed by Jim Jarmusch, Alex de Inglesia, Carlos Saura, Fernando Léon Aranoa and others, scenes and visions from invented films - inspired by the urban appearance - are photographed.
FACING | Photographs, | C- PRINTS | 2013
How can one go through a harsh journey and look so peaceful and proud at the end of his life? The question of their identity is the main focus in this work.
In the area of the french occupation of Indochina, about 20.000 young men from Vietnam were sent by force to France - they should work as non-specialised workers (ouvriers non-spécialisés, O.N.S.) in the industry of the national defence. Those men - between 20 and 30 years old - were selected by force from farmer families.I photographed the last survivors of the workers who decided to stay in France. At the end of their lives.
The portraits were produced for the exhibition Histoires Parallèles: pays mêlés, curated by Alain Buffard.
MOVE AGAINST NOISE | Photographs | 2017
VERDINGT | Photographs | C- PRINTS | 2008
One of the dark chapters in Switzerland’s history is that of the Verdingkinder or Discarded Children. Up until the 1950s children from impoverished families were relocated primarily to farmers who were supposed to take care of these children in exchange for free labor. Most of these children were psychology and/or sexually abused. This situation has just recently come to light.
The work VERDINGT is a series of portraits and was part of the exhibition "Enfances volées", shown in 12 places between 2009 and 2017.
HOW CAN ONE LIVE | Photographs | C- prints |100x80cm | 2010
The work HOW CAN ONE LIVE is a work done in the psychiatric hospital that talks about illness and normality. The elbows of patients, doctors, nurses and other hospital employees were photographed. The elbow is unaesthetic, transparent, private and nearly vulgar. A part of our body that we can't see, that expresses strength, power, structure and vulnerability through a fragile balance between muscles, bones, nerves and veins.
DAZWISCHEN | Photographs | INTERACTIF INSTALLATION | 2005
The spectator is confronted with a projection of an endless journey through places in different cities of Europe. Questions are projected on the floor, taken from text messages. They are renewed in real time, move and disappear. The composition of the image and the text varies constantly, in a movement of permanent fluctuation. The mechanical language of the text messages and the cold and anonymous images of the places, plunges the viewer into a feeling of poetic isolation. There is a feeling of proximity and the desire for change, but what remains is a desperate set of unanswered questions thrown into the deserted places. By a capture system, the movements occurring in the device are captured and processed in real time– the more intense the captured action, the slower the rhythm of the images and vice versa.
