To celebrate the publication of Swiss photographer Philippe Fragnière ‘s new book ‘PASSAGE’, a book signing and workshop will be held at POST. The project has been selected as a finalist for the Swiss Design Award.
Philippe Fragnière is well-knowns as a still life photographer. His first photobook, Snowpark published by Kodoji Press in 2014, has been widely exhibited. Since 2016, he is an invited lecturer at ECAL and works as a still life photographer for editorial and commercial clients in London, Paris and Milan.
This new publication , PASSAGE (Kodoji Press, 2022), results from a ten-year long engagement with the nature and landscapes around the small village of Veysonnaz, located in the Wallis region of the Swiss Alps. Photographer Philippe Fragnière walked the same paths as his ancestors in an attempt to sense what they had felt. From legends and hearsay, he borrowed motifs and a narrative device: ‘objects’ are singledout, at times moved into a studio, and made into provisional totems. Vernacular architectures and amphibians appear alongside land, flora, and fungi, formally elevated into symbols. Alongside one another, they capture the photographer’s phenomenological experience of a terrain to which he returned as he moved through grief. Comfort was found in the cycle of seasons, and in time so infinitely slow it appears still. Like glass, neither solid nor liquid, the images as a sequence exist in suspension, caught between fact and fiction. Scale has no bearing – all is magnified and made equivalent.
Does something exist, the photographer asks, factually or fictively, if no one records it?
«If you listen closely, the glass in the windows melts away and flows into streams, faraway. We inhabit fountains.»
A commissioned short-story by Swiss author Valmir Rexhepi accompanies the images. Dialogues form short poems when read separately from a text that flows from top to bottom over both pages. The story’s characters are described topographically; selves are produced through the encounter with an environment that is overly familiar yet elusive. Together, the images and text point to the desire to make land speak.
[Events] Philippe Fragnière / PASSAGE
Book launch & book signing
Venue: POST 2-10-3 Ebisu-Minami, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0022
Date: 28 Apr (Fri), 2023
Time: 17:00-19:00
Participation is free of charge and no prior booking is required, so everyone is welcome to come along.
Swiss wines will be served.
Workshop
Venue: POST (2-10-3 Ebisu-Minami, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0022)
Date: 30 Apr (Sun), 2023
Time: 16:00-18:00
Capacity: 10 participants
Free
*The event will be held in English.
In the workshop, Philippe, who has done a lot of commercial work as well as personal artwork, will talk about how he has managed to juggle these two projects of different natures as a photographer. This is not a talk event, but rather an opportunity to communicate with the participants and freely exchange ideas. After the discussion, we will hold an open portfolio review, looking at participants’ portfolios and portfolio of work (in any format).
Please send your name, telephone number and a brief description of your activities (e.g. website) to tsunoda@limart.net.
Organized by POST, the events enjoyed the support of the Embassy of Switzerland in Japan and its Vitality.Swiss program.
Article’s cover:
© Philippe Fragnière, ‘PASSAGE’