Switzerland (like the entire world) is in a state of both inner and outer change. After 150 years of astounding stability, nothing today appears as it was yesterday, and that which is sacrosanct today is tomorrow no longer. Finally something is changing, say some, and others find it frightening. With this radical change, the image of Switzerland, the “Swiss” image, is also being transformed. Although the country seems as well arranged as ever – here business zones, there residential zones, traffic zones, leisure zones and fringe zones – the contours of these areas are being blurred, the worlds and their faces are intermingling.
Nicolas Faure’s photographs of today’s Switzerland juxtapose pop culture in the Alps and alpine gardens in the city, they show the highway as contemporary territory, CERN as a place of dizzying research and technology, boulders as signs of nature in front gardens, and they confront the faces of our English, Italian, Burmese, Indian, Senegalese or Syrian co-residents with the view of an internationally styled “native” kids-generation. From one Switzerland to Another: Nicolas Faure’s open, large format colour photographs make manifest the transformation of Switzerland into a large, modern, lean, networked and cool urban landscape. Have you come to know this Switzerland yet?
