swissphotographers

16/09/2022

Amazing exhibition to see until 11.12.2022:
Le voile du réel, by swiss photographer based in Lausanne.
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Under the title Le voile du réel, the Musée d'art de Pully is organizing an exhibition devoted to the Swiss photographer Matthieu Gafsou. The event is divided into two parts, composed on the one hand of the artist's flagship series, commissioned images, as well as unpublished shots, and on the other hand of the series Vivants, completed this spring. The result of a close collaboration with the photographer, the exhibition retraces Matthieu Gafsou's career, from his beginnings as a student to his most recent works. Published for the occasion, a double catalog featuring nearly 300 images offre a survey of the prolific work of one of the major photographers of the Swiss art scene.

While Matthieu Gafsou's first series (Surfaces, 2006-2008, Compromised Lands, 2010, Alps, 2009-2012) are in the tradition of documentary landscape photography, his subsequent works (Sacred, 2011-2012, Only God Can Judge Me, 2012-2014, H+, 2015-2018) tackle social topics such as the Lausanne drug scene and transhumanism. The series Vivants is a combination of humanistic, social and plastic photography and deals with the artist's growing concern about the ecological crisis. Developed over a period of nearly four years, it appears as a complex work of abundant narrativity and great freedom, which seems to announce a new direction in his production.

Born in Lausanne in 1981, Matthieu Gafsou studied philosophy, literature, and the history and aesthetics of cinema at the University of Lausanne, before continuing his training in photography at the School of Applied Arts in Vevey. Since 2006, Matthieu Gafsou has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions such as reGeneration2 at the Aperture Foundation in 2010, Only God Can Judge Me at the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne in 2014 and H+, one of the highlights of the Rencontres de la photographie d'Arles in 2018. In parallel to his artistic work, he teaches at the École cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL).
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03/08/2022

From the series: San Basilio de Palenque by ©François Graf.
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Born in Colombia, in Cali, on September 15, 1973, based in Lausanne. First training as a lithographer in the Graphic Arts in the early nineties and then at the School of Photography in Vevey in 1997. He is a member of the Lausanne collective Strates Photographies. He distinguishes himself in committed reportage and portrait photography.
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23/07/2022

Weisser Pfau by ©Simone Kappeler, courtesy of
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If there were only one word to describe Simone Kappeler’s oeuvre, it would be “stillness”. This stillness is a form of complete silence that marks more than a brief moment, more than arrested time. What is so utterly captivating in Kappeler’s photographs is their sense of almost filmic duration.

Many who have written about Simone Kappeler speak of the timelessness that informs her photographs. It is as if the moment, the tiny slice of time, captured in these pictures has dropped out of the temporal continuum. Kappeler’s subject matter covers the entire spectrum of classical photography: landscape, interiors, still lifes, everyday scenes, portraits. The pictures are taken in the context of her surroundings at home and in the course of numerous travels. Although her work features a striking variety of styles, it shows a cogent overall coherence.

Many of the photographs are marked by a sense of flow. The subject matter shimmers; there are no distinct contours. Sometimes, it is as if we were witnessing a picture in the making, watching the magical process that has vanished since the rise of digital photography. It is as if we were in the dark room watching forms slowly taking shape on the paper; we see a landscape emerging, we can gradually identify things or people. The feeling that some-
thing is rising up out of the depths of the picture plane – actually a contradiction in terms – is often conveyed in Simone Kappeler’s photographs. It is not only that they are blurred; the photographs themselves seem unfinished, non-finito, as in the fine arts. They are in an incomplete state, constantly in a state of becoming.
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18/07/2022

By ©Michel Comte
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Born in Zurich in 1954, with a compulsively acquisitive eye and self-taught as a photographer, Comte enjoyed a meteoric rise after being discovered by Karl Lagerfeld when he moved to Paris in the late 70s as a trained fine art restorer.

The 80s naturally drew him to New York, and he later took residence in Los Angeles. Comte says of his restless persona: “I have always lived on the edge. I probably inherited that from my grandfather”, referring to Swiss aviation pioneer Alfred Comte.

For over 30 years, he created iconic advertising, fielding commissions from labels like Armani, Ungaro, Ferrari, Dolce & Gabbana, Nike, as well as assignments from Vogue, Vanity Fair and all the major publications. In later years, he trained his lens on travel photography and evocative landscapes of his beloved Engadin, as well as war reportage, taking on photo assignments for the International Red Cross as well as his own Water Foundation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Sudan and Cambodia.

His body of work is both vast and distinctive. Intensely private, Michel Comte remained an enigma, even to those who worked frequently with him. He is both auteur and vo**ur, driven to capture what Sargent called ‘the animal in the sitter’ more by compulsion than commission. His iconic portraits from the world of art, music, film, sports and fashion all carry that signature style: an essential ability to conjure in the sitter something so spontaneous, intimate and authentic, that it connects with the viewer for all time. Not one to discount the value of experience over affinity, he is famously quoted to have responded deadpan to the question of how long it takes him to perfect a great spontaneous shot: “30 years and 5 minutes”.
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.comte

17/07/2022

Sylvester Stallone, by ©Michel Comte
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Born in Zurich in 1954, with a compulsively acquisitive eye and self-taught as a photographer, Comte enjoyed a meteoric rise after being discovered by Karl Lagerfeld when he moved to Paris in the late 70s as a trained fine art restorer.

The 80s naturally drew him to New York, and he later took residence in Los Angeles. Comte says of his restless persona: “I have always lived on the edge. I probably inherited that from my grandfather”, referring to Swiss aviation pioneer Alfred Comte.

For over 30 years, he created iconic advertising, fielding commissions from labels like Armani, Ungaro, Ferrari, Dolce & Gabbana, Nike, as well as assignments from Vogue, Vanity Fair and all the major publications. In later years, he trained his lens on travel photography and evocative landscapes of his beloved Engadin, as well as war reportage, taking on photo assignments for the International Red Cross as well as his own Water Foundation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Sudan and Cambodia.

His body of work is both vast and distinctive. Intensely private, Michel Comte remained an enigma, even to those who worked frequently with him. He is both auteur and vo**ur, driven to capture what Sargent called ‘the animal in the sitter’ more by compulsion than commission. His iconic portraits from the world of art, music, film, sports and fashion all carry that signature style: an essential ability to conjure in the sitter something so spontaneous, intimate and authentic, that it connects with the viewer for all time. Not one to discount the value of experience over affinity, he is famously quoted to have responded deadpan to the question of how long it takes him to perfect a great spontaneous shot: “30 years and 5 minutes”.
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.comte

21/06/2022

By ©Christian Coigny, swiss photographer, born in Lausanne in 1946. Christian Coigny has for the past 40 years developed a career in traditional black and white photography in parallel to his work in publicity and fashion. He works primarily with film. His work is anchored in a classical education and strongly influenced by American painters such as Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keefe or Andrew Wyeth, that he discovered during his 5-year stay in San Francisco.
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13/06/2022