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23.11.2023 – 25.02.2024
When I was five, I narrowly avoided drowning. I’m almost dead. When you drown, you quickly experience this definitive moment known to all those who have come close to death : the vision is veiled, you give up and you pass out in darkness.
Years later, I tamed the water, to the point of dedicating an unreasonable amount of time to it and, often passing for an original, to like being there when everyone feared it : in the dark waters of the night. For long minutes, I floated calmly on my back, staring at the darkness, which I challenged, listening to my breaths; in this water that had almost killed me, I never died. Neither she nor the night could have me. I felt alive, more than at any other time of the day. I’ve been doing this for years.
In 2015, a series of singular chances led me on a merchant marine cargo ship. During this first winter trip, I experienced strange parentheses, intervals with no known marks. And above all, I found a way to cure my time-consuming addiction. On the ocean, it is at night that the intranquillity is total: when the weather is cloudy and the ship completely extinguished, the sea becomes invisible and even more abyssal. A total matte blackness, whether you close or open your eyes. We can only guess the waves by their sound. Sailors don’t like the night; you feel like you’re running out of air, more vulnerable.
But when an indeterminate glow makes the horizon visible again, life prevails over nothingness. With each of these appearances, I saw myself reopening my eyes as a rescued child, dazzled, surrounded by those who watched over me in the light. Thrilled by this feeling, and wanting to challenge the water in large format, I made four more trips, often uncomfortable, sometimes dangerous (one of my cargo ships almost turned over in the North Atlantic).
But again, nothing engulfed me. In this cathartic work, I found what I needed: I no longer float at night to challenge the darkness. I feel alive from waking to bedtime.
29.06.2023 – 19.11.2023
“I hold your hand and, carefully, try to capture it. Imprint on my brain the texture of your wrinkly skin, the warmth of your touch, the way your fingers wrap around mine.”
After seven years of illness, my father’s battle with his cancer was coming to an end. I was torn between conflicting emotions, as my sister became a mother around the same time my father’s health declined. Watching a new life grow whilst another was weakening redefined my understanding of time – it became clear just how fragile life really is.
At times, when home felt too close, nature gave my mind a safe place to rest. All the while, the forest’s slow growth and decay resembled the illness that was consuming life as I knew it. You Felt the Roots Grow was born in a time between hope and grief. It is my personal experience as a daughter, in which I face the bittersweetness of transience, the poetry within loss and the incompleteness of memory.
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Sabine Hess (b. 1994), is a Swiss photographer, based between London and Thun, Switzerland. She graduated from the London College of Communication inPhotojournalism and Documentary Photography in 2022. Her photographic practice centers around intimate narratives and notions of home, belonging, loss, and memory. Alongside her documentary projects, Hess has experience in editorial and portraiture photography. Clients include FT Weekend Magazine, PORT Magazine, M le Magazine du Monde, and Jigsaw. Her first book You Felt the Roots Grow was shortlisted for the Star Photobook Dummy Award and will be published by Ciao Press and Witty Books in May of 2023.
06.04.2023 – 25.06.2023
“Hola…First of all, I would like to thank you for taking the time to come and see my exhibition and to approach my universe.
It has always been very difficult for me to explain my artistic work, especially when it is so personal and intimate. In these pictures I have selected, you will find several fragments of my reality, full of emotional events where photography has been my accomplice and companion on this path of art. I will show you places that evoke nostalgia, others where you will discover a great sadness and perhaps anger, all with the excuse of doing a cathartic work on what we are and will be.
The idea of presenting these photographs was born from my aspiration to seek visual poetry in my images. After creating a narrative with a selection of my archives,
I proposed to the french artist Anagate to establish a collaboration so that our two worlds could merge. These poems thus came to enrich my initial idea and concretized the project.
The world of art is a very long and arduous way, I tried for a long time to create my work, to find my colors, my lights and try to express my emotions. This exhibition means a lot to me and I am very happy to be able to share my work with you.
Without further ado, I wish you a pleasant visit.
Muchos besos para todes”
Carlos Corrales
26.01.2023 – 02.04.2023
“Closest to the surface is the sunlight zone, where plants thrive; then comes the twilight zone, the abyss. Oceanographers have visited these layers in submersible vehicles for half a century, but the final layer is difficult to reach. It is known as the hadal zone, in reference to Hades, the ancient Greek god of the underworld, and it includes any water that is at least 6,000 meters below the surface. (…) Since plants disappear a few hundred feet below sea level,and everything goes dark a little farther down, there was no reason to expect a thriving ecosystem in the deep.” 1
And yet, we found it.
« Life could appear in perfect darkness, in blistering heat and a broth of noxious compounds – an environment that would extinguish every known creature on Earth. » 2
If you dig deep enough into the darkness, you’ll end up finding beauty where you did not expect to. And if you dig into the norm, well, you may find yourself facing a bunch of monsters
1 Wil S. Hylton, « History’s Largest Mining Operation Is About to Begin », The Atlantic, January / February 2020 issue.
2 Ibid
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Matthieu Croizier (1994) is a freelance artist and photographer based in Lausanne. He graduated from the Vevey School of Photography (CEPV) in 2017 and from the Bachelor in Photography of the Cantonal School of Art in Lausanne (ECAL) in 2020.
Using photography as a tool, he tries to transform reality into fantasy – or the opposite – and to blur the boundaries between what is considered normal and what is not. From then on, he is mainly interested in queerness and the representation of the human body and seeks, in his work, to evoke the tension between opposing notions, such as the beautiful and the ugly, fascination and repulsion, the ordinary and the spectacular. He has taken part in various group exhibitions since 2017 in Switzerland and abroad. He has been nominated as a British Journal of Photography’s Ones to Watch 2021, as well as a Futures Talents 2021. He is also a laureate of the Paris Photo’s Carte Blanche Students 2020 and was awarded the 26th vfg Young Talent Award for Photography.
Besides his personal projects, he gets commissioned for shooting portraits, editorial or still life, and has worked for magazines such as M le Monde or T Magazine.
22.09.2022 – 22.01.2023
Michal Florence Schorro (1987) lives and works in Zurich. She studied Visual communication at Bern University of the Arts (HKB) and received an MA in Art Direction and Photography from the Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL) in 2013. With a distinct fascination for urban spaces, her photographic work investigates places that build and define identities.
The series JUSTE UNE PAUSE takes a stroll through a quiet cityscape, empty of human presence. The images alternate between architectural details and sceneries with natural elements, and share an impression of peace. Focusing on materiality, structures and colors, abstract compositions are created.
By being fully present behind the camera as she was taking each picture, Michal was able to regain awareness of objects she had overseen for a long time. The very act of taking those pictures thus became an exercise of mindfulness, which is reflected in the pictures.
Michal Florence Schorro’s photographic practice focuses on urban space, where she feels the most at ease, and where every neighborhood reminds her of a chapter of her life. The constantly evolving urban space is a site that holds her memories, and each picture she takes traces her impressions of a given place at a given time.
The publication JUSTE UNE PAUSE gathers 71 images and was self-published early in 2020.
13.07.2022 – 18.09.2022
For centuries, female bodies have been painted mostly by – and for – men. Without even realizing it, the images we see become embedded in us and form the basis of our way of seeing the world. The Swiss photographer Mathilda Olmi has taken up this theme with the idea of participating in the renewal of these images.
And so, she asked her models to confide in her about the relationship they have with their bodies. Far from poses with artificial sensuality, Mathilda Olmi was able to capture the essence of each person through postures, gestures, almost an improvised dance in front of the lens. The natural light reveals the details and particularities of each person, far beyond the clichés conveyed by advertising or the media.
The still lifes that punctuate this series are both pauses and markers of everyday life, and also refer to ecofeminist theories that link the relationship between thexploitation of nature and the oppression of women and gender minorities by men.
A wild plant appreciated by witches, thorny and tenacious, the dog rose (Rosa Canina L.), here draws up an activist echo to the artistic proposal of the photographer.
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Photographer who graduated in 2015 from the CEPV, Mathilda Olmi (1991) lives and works in Lausanne (Switzerland).
She works as a freelance photographer for the press, fashion and many culturalinstitutions. In 2016, following a stay in the United States, she published her first book «A Bird in the Hand» at Editions FP&CF. In 2020, she undertook a work on permaculture entitled «Resilientia» as part of the Valais Photographic Survey.
Shortly after, she was selected by Pro Helvetia for the promotion of young photographers to carry out her project «Rosa Canina», which was published in March 2022 by Editions FP&CF.
This project brings together intimate portraits, nude photographs and still lifes, andinvites us to question the way we show and look at the female body.
It is with natural light that Mathilda Olmi seizes her subjects. Through tight framing, through the play of light and shadow, reflections or transparency, she creates images that sometimes approach abstraction.
Ordinary Man Coffee
Rue du Petit-Chêne 28
CH-1003 Lausanne